The, 

RAIL 

of  4he, 

AWK 


INCLAIR  LEWIS 


NTA  CRUZ 


RUZ 


L.1FORN1A 
TA  CRUZ 


THE    TRAIL   OF  THE    HAWK 


"551 


ry. 


[See  page  290 

THE  COLD  BREEZE  ENLIVENED  THEM,  THE  STERNNESS  OF  THE 
SWIFT,  CRUEL  RIVER  AND  MILES  OF  BROWN  SHORE  MADE  THEM 
GRAVELY  HAPPY. 


THE  TRAIL  OF 

THE  HAWK 

A     COMEDY 

OF    THE     SERIOUSNESS 
OF    LIFE 


BY 

SINCLAIR  -LEWIS 


AUTHOR   OF 

OUR  MR.  WRENN 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK   AND    LONDON 


THB  TRAIL  OF  THB  HAWK 

Copyright,  1915,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  StatM  of  America 

Published  September,  1915 


TO  THE  OPTIMISTIC  REBELS  THROUGH 
WHOSE  TALK  AT  LUNCHEON  THE  AUTHOR 
WATCHES  THE  MANY-COLORED  SPECTACLE 
OF  LIFE  — GEORGE  SOULE.  HARRISON 
SMITH.  ALLAN  UPDEGRAFF,  F.  K.  NOYES. 
ALFRED  HARCOURT,  B.  W.  HUEBSCH. 


Part  I 
THE  ADVENTURE  OF  YOUTH 


THE  TRAIL  OF 

THE    HAWK 


CHAPTER  I 

CARL  ERICSON  was  being  naughty.  Probably  no 
boy  in  Joralemon  was  being  naughtier  that  October 
Saturday  afternoon.  He  had  not  half  finished  the  wood- 
piling  which  was  his  punishment  for  having  chased  the 
family  rooster  thirteen  times  squawking  around  the 
chicken-yard,  while  playing  soldiers  with  Bennie  Rusk. 

He  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  musty  woodshed,  pes- 
simistically kicking  at  the  scattered  wood.  His  face  was 
stern,  as  became  a  man  of  eight  who  was  a  soldier  of  for- 
tune famed  from  the  front  gate  to  the  chicken-yard. 
An  unromantic  film  of  dirt  hid  the  fact  that  his  Scandi- 
navian cheeks  were  like  cream-colored  silk  stained  with 
rose-petals.  A  baby  Norseman,  with  only  an  average 
boy's  prettiness,  yet  with  the  whiteness  and  slenderness 
of  a  girl's  little  finger.  A  back-yard  boy,  in  baggy  jacket 
and  pants,  gingham  blouse,  and  cap  whose  lining  oozed 
back  over  his  ash-blond  hair,  which  was  tangled  now  like 
trampled  grass,  with  a  tiny  chip  riding  grotesquely  on 
one  flossy  lock. 

The  darkness  of  the  shed  displeased  Carl.  The  whole 
basic  conception  of  work  bored  him.  The  sticks  of  wood 
were  personal  enemies  to  which  he  gave  insulting  names. 

3 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

He  had  always  admired  the  hard  bark  and  metallic  reso- 
nance of  the  ironwood,  but  he  hated  the  poplar — "pop- 
ple" it  is  called  in  Joralemon,  Minnesota.  Poplar  be- 
comes dry  and  dusty,  and  the  bark  turns  to  a  monstrously 
mottled  and  evil  greenish-white.  Carl  announced  to  one 
poplar  stick,  "I  could  lick  you!  I'm  a  gen'ral,  I  am." 
The  stick  made  no  reply  whatever,  and  he  contemptu- 
ously shied  it  out  into  the  chickweed  which  matted  the 
grubby  back  yard.  This  necessitated  his  sneaking  out 
and  capturing  it  by  stalking  it  from  the  rear,  lest  it  rouse 
the  Popple  Army. 

He  loitered  outside  the  shed,  sniffing  at  the  smoke  from 
burning  leaves — the  scent  of  autumn  and  migration  and 
wanderlust.  He  glanced  down  between  houses  to  the 
reedy  shore  of  Joralemon  Lake.  The  surface  of  the  water 
was  smooth,  and  tinted  like  a  bluebell,  save  for  one 
patch  in  the  current  where  wavelets  leaped  with  October 
madness  in  sparkles  of  diamond  fire.  Across  the  lake, 
woods  sprinkled  with  gold-dust  and  paprika  broke  the 
sweep  of  sparse  yellow  stubble,  and  a  red  barn  was  softly 
brilliant  in  the  caressing  sunlight  and  lively  air  of  the 
Minnesota  prairie.  Over  there  was  the  field  of  valor, 
where  grown-up  men  with  shiny  shotguns  went  hunt- 
ing prairie-chickens;  the  Great  World,  leading  clear  to 
the  Red  River  Valley  and  Canada. 

Three  mallard-ducks,  with  necks  far  out  and  wings 
beating  hurriedly,  shot  over  Carl's  head.  From  far  off 
a  gun-shot  floated  echoing  through  forest  hollows;  in 
the  waiting  stillness  sounded  a  rooster's  crow,  distant, 
magical. 

"I  want  to  go  hunting!"  mourned  Carl,  as  he  trailed 
back  into  the  woodshed.  It  seemed  darker  than  ever 
and  smelled  of  moldy  chips.  He  bounced  like  an  enraged 
chipmunk.  His  phlegmatic  china-blue  eyes  filmed  with 
tears.  "Won't  pile  no  more  wood!"  he  declared. 

Naughty  he  undoubtedly  was.  But  since  he  knew  that 
his  father,  Oscar  Ericson,  the  carpenter,  all  knuckles  and 

4 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

patched  overalls  and  bad  temper,  would  probably  whip 
him  for  rebellion,  he  may  have  acquired  merit.  He  did 
not  even  look  toward  the  house  to  see  whether  his  mother 
was  watching  him — his  farm-bred,  worried,  kindly,  small, 
flat-chested,  pinch-nosed,  bleached,  twangy- voiced,  plucky 
Norwegian  mother.  He  marched  to  the  workshop  and 
brought  a  collection  of  miscellaneous  nails  and  screws 
out  to  a  bare  patch  of  earth  in  front  of  the  chicken-yard. 
They  were  the  Nail  People,  the  most  reckless  band  of 
mercenaries  the  world  has  ever  known,  led  by  old  Gen- 
eral Door-Hinge,  who  was  somewhat  inclined  to  collapse 
in  the  middle,  but  possessed  of  the  unusual  virtue  of 
eyes  in  both  ends  of  him.  He  had  explored  the  deepest 
canons  of  the  woodshed,  and  victoriously  led  his  ten- 
penny  warriors  against  the  sumacs  in  the  vacant  lot  be- 
yond Irving  Lamb's  house. 

Carl  marshaled  the  Nail  People,  sticking  them  upright 
in  the  ground.  After  reasoning  sternly  with  an  intruding 
sparrow,  thus  did  the  dauntless  General  Door-Hinge 
address  them: 

"Men,  there's  a  nawful  big  army  against  us,  but  le's 
die  like  men,  my  men.  Forwards!" 

As  the  veteran  finished,  a  devastating  fire  of  stones 
enfiladed  the  company,  and  one  by  one  they  fell,  save  for 
the  commander  himself,  who  bowed  his  grizzled  wrought- 
steel  head  and  sobbed,  "The  brave  boys  done  their  duty." 

From  across  the  lake  rolled  another  gun-shot. 

Carl  dug  his  grimy  fingers  into  the  earth.  "Jiminy!  I 
wisht  I  was  out  hunting.  Why  can't  I  never  go?  I 
guess  I'll  pile  the  wood,  but  I'm  gonna  go  seek-my-fortune 
after  that." 

Since  Carl  Ericson  (some  day  to  be  known  as  "Hawk" 
Ericson)  was  the  divinely  restless  seeker  of  the  romance 
that  must — or  we  die! — lie  beyond  the  hills,  you  first  see 
him  in  action;  find  him  in  the  year  1893,  aSe<^  eight, 
leading  revolutions  in  the  back  yard.  But  equally,  since 

5 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

this  is  a  serious  study  of  an  average  young  American, 
there  should  be  an  indication  of  his  soil-nourished  an- 
cestry. 

Carl  was  second-generation  Norwegian;  American-born, 
American  in  speech,  American  in  appearance,  save  for  his 
flaxen  hair  and  china-blue  eyes;  and,  thanks  to  the  flag- 
decked  public  school,  overwhelmingly  American  in  tradi- 
tion. When  he  was  born  the  "typical  Americans"  of 
earlier  stocks  had  moved  to  city  palaces  or  were  marooned 
on  run-down  farms.  It  was  Carl  Ericson,  not  a  Trow- 
bridge  or  a  Stuyvesant  or  a  Lee  or  a  Grant,  who  was  the 
"typical  American"  of  his  period.  It  was  for  him  to 
carry  on  the  American  destiny  of  extending  the  Western 
horizon;  his  to  restore  the  wintry  Pilgrim  virtues  and  the 
exuberant,  October,  partridge-drumming  days  of  Daniel 
Boone;  then  to  add,  in  his  own  or  another  generation,  new 
American  aspirations  for  beauty. 

They  are  the  New  Yankees,  these  Scandinavians  of 
Wisconsin  and  Minnesota  and  the  Dakotas,  with  a  human 
breed  that  can  grow,  and  a  thousand  miles  to  grow  in. 
The  foreign-born  parents,  when  they  first  come  to  the 
Northern  Middlewest,  huddle  in  unpainted  farm-houses 
with  grassless  dooryards  and  fly-zizzing  kitchens  and 
smelly  dairies,  set  on  treeless,  shadeless,  unsoftened 
leagues  of  prairie  or  bunched  in  new  clearings  ragged  with 
small  stumps.  The  first  generation  are  alien  and  forlorn. 
The  echoing  fjords  of  Trondhjem  and  the  moors  of  Fin- 
mark  have  clipped  their  imaginations,  silenced  their 
laughter,  hidden  with  ice  their  real  tenderness.  In 
America  they  go  sedulously  to  the  bare  Lutheran  church 
and  frequently  drink  ninety-per-cent.  alcohol.  They  are 
also  heroes,  and  have  been  the  makers  of  a  new  land,  from 
the  days  of  Indian  raids  and  ox-teams  and  hillside  dug- 
outs to  now,  repeating  in  their  patient  hewing  the  history 
of  the  Western  Reserve.  ...  In  one  generation  or  even 
in  one  decade  they  emerge  from  the  desolation  of  being 
foreigners.  They,  and  the  Germans,  pay  Yankee  mort- 

6 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

gages  with  blood  and  sweat.  They  swiftly  master 
politics,  voting  for  honesty  rather  than  for  hand-shakes; 
they  make  keen,  scrupulously  honest  business  deals;  send 
their  children  to  school;  accumulate  land — one  section, 
two  sections — or  move  to  town  to  keep  shop  and  ply 
skilled  tools;  become  Methodists  and  Congregationalists ; 
are  neighborly  with  Yankee  manufacturers  and  doctors 
and  teachers;  and  in  one  generation,  or  less,  are  com- 
pletely American. 

So  was  it  with  Carl  Ericson.  His  carpenter  father  had 
come  from  Norway,  by  way  of  steerage  and  a  farm  in 
Wisconsin,  changing  his  name  from  Ericsen.  Ericson 
senior  owned  his  cottage  and,  though  he  still  said,  "Aye 
ban  going,"  he  talked  as  naturally  of  his  own  American 
tariff  and  his  own  Norwegian-American  Governor  as 
though  he  had  five  generations  of  Connecticut  or  Virginia 
ancestry. 

Now,  it  was  Carl's  to  go  on,  to  seek  the  flowering. 

Unconscious  that  he  was  the  heir-apparent  of  the  age, 
but  decidedly  conscious  that  the  woodshed  was  dark, 
Carl  finished  the  pile. 

From  the  step  of  the  woodshed  he  regarded  the  world 
with  plaintive  boredom. 

"Ir-r-r-r-rving!"  he  called. 

No  answer  from  Irving,  the  next-door  boy. 

The  village  was  rustlingly  quiet.  Carl  skipped  slowly 
and  unhappily  to  the  group  of  box-elders  beside  the  work- 
shop and  stuck  his  finger-nails  into  the  cobwebby  crevices 
of  the  black  bark.  He  made  overtures  for  company  on 
any  terms  to  a  hop-robin,  a  woolly  worm,  and  a  large  blue 
fly,  but  they  all  scorned  his  advances,  and  when  he  yelled 
an  ingratiating  invitation  to  a  passing  dog  it  seemed  to 
swallow  its  tail  and  ears  as  it  galloped  off.  No  one  else 
appeared. 

Before  the  kitchen  window  he  quavered: 

"Ma-ma!" 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

In  the  kitchen,  the  muffled  pounding  of  a  sad-iron  upon 
the  padded  ironing-board. 

"Ma!" 

Mrs.  Ericson's  whitey-yellow  hair,  pale  eyes,  and  small 
nervous  features  were  shadowed  behind  the  cotton  fly- 
screen. 

"Veil?"  she  said. 

"I  haven't  got  noth-ing  to  do-o." 

"Go  pile  the  vood." 

"I  piled  piles  of  it." 

"Then  you  can  go  and  play." 

"I  been  playing." 

"Then  play  some  more." 

"I  ain't  got  nobody  to  play  with." 

"Then  find  somebody.  But  don't  you  step  vun  step 
out  of  this  yard." 

"I  don't  see  why  I  can't  go  outa  the  yard!" 

"Because  I  said  so." 

Again  the  sound  of  the  sad-iron. 

Carl  invented  a  game  in  which  he  was  to  run  in  circles, 
but  not  step  on  the  grass;  he  made  the  tenth  inspection 
that  day  of  the  drying  hazelnuts  whose  husks  were 
turning  to  seal-brown  on  the  woodshed  roof;  he  hunted 
for  a  good  new  bottle  to  throw  at  Irving  Lamb's  barn; 
he  mended  his  sling-shot;  he  perched  on  a  sawbuck  and 
watched  the  street.  Nothing  passed,  nothing  made  an 
interesting  rattling,  except  one  democrat  wagon. 

From  over  the  water  another  gun-shot  murmured  of 
distant  hazards. 

Carl  jumped  down  from  the  sawbuck  and  marched 
deliberately  out  of  the  yard,  along  Oak  Street  toward  The 
Hill,  the  smart  section  of  Joralemon,  where  live  in  ex- 
clusive state  five  large  houses  that  get  painted  nearly 
every  year. 

"I'm  gonna  seek-my-fortune.  I'm  gonna  find  Bennie  and 
go  swimming,"  he  vowed.  Calmly  as  Napoleon  defying 
his  marshals,  General  Carl  disregarded  the  sordid  facts 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

that  it  was  too  late  in  the  year  to  go  swimming,  and  that 
Benjamin  Franklin  Rusk  couldn't  swim,  anyway.  He 
clumped  along,  planting  his  feet  with  spats  of  dust,  very 
dignified  and  melancholy  but,  like  all  small  boys,  occa- 
sionally going  mad  and  running  in  chase  of  nothing  at  all 
till  he  found  it. 

He  stopped  before  the  House  with  Mysterious  Shutters. 

Carl  had  never  made  b'lieve  fairies  or  princes;  rather,  he 
was  in  the  secret  world  of  boyhood  a  soldier,  a  trapper,  or 
a  swing-brakeman  on  the  M.  &  D.  R.R.  But  he  was 
bespelled  by  the  suggestion  of  grandeur  in  the  iron  fence 
and  gracious  trees  and  dark  carriage-shed  of  the  House 
with  Shutters.  It  was  a  large,  square,  solid  brick  struc- 
ture, set  among  oaks  and  sinister  pines,  once  the  home,  or 
perhaps  the  mansion,  of  Banker  Whiteley,  but  unoccu- 
pied for  years.  Leaves  rotted  before  the  deserted  car- 
riage-shed. The  disregarded  steps  in  front  were  seamed 
with  shallow  pools  of  water  for  days  after  a  rain.  The 
windows  had  always  been  darkened,  but  not  by  broad- 
slatted  outside  shutters,  smeared  with  house-paint  to 
which  stuck  tiny  black  hairs  from  the  paint-brush,  like 
the  ordinary  frame  houses  of  Joralemon.  Instead,  these 
windows  were  masked  with  inside  shutters  haughtily 
varnished  to  a  hard  refined  brown. 

To-day  the  windows  were  open,  the  shutters  folded; 
furniture  was  being  moved  in;  and  just  inside  the  iron 
gate  a  frilly  little  girl  was  playing  with  a  whitewashed 
conch-shell. 

She  must  have  been  about  ten  at  that  time,  since  Carl 
was  eight.  She  was  a  very  dressy  and  complacent  child, 
possessed  not  only  of  a  clean  white  muslin  with  three  rows 
of  tucks,  immaculate  bronze  boots,  and  a  green  tam-o'- 
shanter,  but  also  of  a  large  hair-ribbon,  a  ribbon  sash, 
and  a  silver  chain  with  a  large,  gold-washed,  heart-shaped 
locket.  She  was  softly  plump,  softly  gentle  of  face,  softly 
brown  of  hair,  and  softly  pleasant  of  speech. 

"Hello!"  said  she. 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"H'lo!" 

"What's  your  name,  little  boy?" 

"Ain't  a  little  boy.     I'm  Carl  Ericson." 

"Oh,  are  you?     I'm " 

"I'm  gonna  have  a  shotgun  when  I'm  fifteen."  He 
shyly  hurled  a  stone  at  a  telegraph-pole  to  prove  that  he 
was  not  shy. 

"My  name  is  Gertie  Cowles.  I  came  from  Minne- 
apolis. My  mamma  owns  part  of  the  Joralemon  Flour 
Mill.  .  .  .  Are  you  a  nice  boy?  We  just  moved  here 
and  I  don't  know  anybody.  Maybe  my  mamma  will  let 
me  play  with  you  if  you  are  a  nice  boy." 

"I  jus'  soon  come  play  with  you.  If  you  play  soldiers. 
\  .  .  My  pa  's  the  smartest  man  in  Joralemon.  He 
builded  Alex  Johnson's  house.  He's  got  a  ten-gauge 
gun." 

"Oh.  .  .  .  My  mamma  's  a  widow." 

Carl  hung  by  his  arms  from  the  gate-pickets  while  she 
breathed,  "M-m-m-m-m-m-y!"  in  admiration  at  the  feat. 

"That  ain't  nothing.  I  can  hang  by  my  knees  on  a 
trapeze.  .  .  .  What  did  you  come  from  Minneapolis  for?" 

"We're  going  to  live  here,"  she  said. 

"Oh." 

"I  went  to  the  Chicago  World's  Fair  with  my  mamma 
this  summer." 

"Aw,  you  didn't!" 

"I  did  so.  And  I  saw  a  teeny  engine  so  small  it  was  in 
a  walnut-shell  and  you  had  to  look  at  it  through  a  magnify- 
ing-glass  and  it  kept  on  running  like  anything." 

"Huh!  that's  nothing!  Ben  Rusk,  he  went  to  the 
World's  Fair,  too,  and  he  saw  a  statchue  that  was  bigger  'n 
our  house  and  all  pure  gold.  You  didn't  see  that." 

"I  did  so!  And  we  got  cousins  in  Chicago  and  we 
stayed  with  them,  and  Cousin  Edgar  is  a  very  prominent 
doctor  for  eyenear  and  stummick." 

"Aw,  Ben  Rusk's  pa  is  a  doctor,  too.  And  he's  got  a 
brother  what's  going  to  be  a  sturgeon." 

10 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"I  got  a  brother.  He's  a  year  older  than  me.  His 
name  is  Ray.  .  .  .  There's  lots  more  people  in  Minneap- 
olis than  there  is  in  Joralemon.  There's  a  hundred 
thousand  people  in  Minneapolis." 

"That  ain't  nothing.  My  pa  was  born  in  Christiania, 
in  the  Old  Country,  and  they's  a  million  million  people 
there." 

"Oh,  there  is  not!" 

"Honest  there  is." 

"Is  there,  honest?"     Gertie  was  admiring  now. 

He  looked  patronizingly  at  the  red-plush  furniture 
which  was  being  splendidly  carried  into  the  great  house 
from  Jordan's  dray — an  old  friend  of  Carl's,  which  had 
often  carried  him  banging  through  town.  He  conde- 
scended : 

"Jiminy!  You  don't  know  Bennie  Rusk  nor  nobody, 
do  you!  I'll  bring  him  and  we  can  play  soldiers.  And 
we  can  make  tents  out  of  carpets.  Did  you  ever  run 
through  carpets  on  the  line?" 

He  pointed  to  the  row  of  rugs  and  carpets  airing  beside 
the  carriage-shed. 

"No.     Is  it  fun?" 

"It's  awful  scary.     But  I  ain't  afraid." 

He  dashed  at  the  carpets  and  entered  their  long  narrow 
tent.  To  tell  the  truth,  when  he  stepped  from  the  sun- 
shine into  the  intense  darkness  he  was  slightly  afraid. 
The  Ericsons'  one  carpet  made  a  short  passage,  but  to  pass 
on  and  on  and  on  through  this  succession  of  heavy  rug 
mats,  where  snakes  and  poisonous  bugs  might  hide,  and 
where  the  rough-threaded,  gritty  under-surface  scratched 
his  pushing  hands,  was  fearsome.  He  emerged  with  a 
whoop  and  encouraged  her  to  try  the  feat.  She  peeped 
inside  the  first  carpet,  but  withdrew  her  head,  giving 
homage: 

"Oh,  it's  so  dark  in  there  where  you  went!" 

He  promptly  performed  the  feat  again. 

As  they  wandered  back  to  the  gate  to  watch  the  furni- 

2  II 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

ture-man  Gertie  tried  to  regain  the  superiority  due  her 
years  by  remarking,  of  a  large  escritoire  which  was  being 
juggled  into  the  front  door,  "My  papa  bought  that  desk 

s~*ir  '  » 

in  Chicago 

Carl  broke  in,  "I'll  bring  Bennie  Rusk,  and  me  and  him 
'11  teach  you  to  play  soldiers." 

"My  mamma  don't  think  I  ought  to  play  games.  Fve 
got  a  lot  of  dolls,  but  I'm  too  old  for  dolls.  I  play  Authors 
with  mamma,  sometimes.  And  dominoes.  Authors  is  a 
very  nice  game." 

"But  maybe  your  ma  will  let  you  play  Indian  squaw, 
and  me  and  Bennie  '11  tie  you  to  a  stake  and  scalp  you. 
That  won't  be  rough  like  soldiers.  Buf  I'm  going  to  be 
a  really-truly  soldier.  I'm  going  to  be  a  norficer  in  the 
army." 

"I  got  a  cousin  that's  an  officer  in  the  army,"  Gertie 
said  grandly,  bringing  her  yellow-ribboned  braid  round 
over  her  shoulder  and  gently  brushing  her  lips  with  the 
end. 

"  Cross-your-heart  ?" 
.  "Um-huh." 

"Cross-your-heart,  hope-t'-die  if  you  ain't?" 

"Honest  he's  an  officer." 

"Jiminy  crickets!  Say,  Gertie,  could  he  make  me  a 
norficer?  Let's  go  find  him.  Does  he  live  near  here?" 

"Oh  my,  no!     He's  'way  off  in  San  Francisco." 

"Come  on.  Let's  go  there.  You  and  me.  Gee!  I  like 
you!  You  got  a'  awful  pertty  dress." 

"Tain't  polite  to  compliment  me  to  my  face.  Mamma 
says " 

"Come  on!     Let's  go!     We're  going!" 

"Oh  no.  I'd  like  to,"  she  faltered,  "but  my  mamma 
wouldn't  let  me.  She  don't  let  me  play  around  with  boys, 
anyway.  She's  in  the  house  now.  And  besides,  it's  'way 
far  off  across  the  sea,  to  San  Francisco;  it's  beyond  the 
salt  sea  where  the  Mormons  live,  and  they  all  got  seven 
wives." 

12 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Beyond  the  sea  like  Christiania?  Ah,  'tain't!  It's  in 
America,  because  Mr.  Lamb  went  there  last  winter. 
'Sides,  even  if  it  was  across  the  sea,  couldn't  we  go  an' 
be  stow'ways,  like  the  Younger  Brothers  and  all  them? 
And  Little  Lord  Fauntleroy.  He  went  and  was  a  lord, 
and  he  wasn't  nothing  but  a'  orphing.  My  ma  read  me 
about  him,  only  she  don't  talk  English  very  good,  but 
we'll  go  stow'ways,"  he  wound  up,  triumphantly. 

"Gerrmrtrrrrrude!"  A  high-pitched  voice  from  the 
stoop. 

Gertie  glowered  at  a  tall,  meager  woman  with  a  long 
green-and-white  apron  over  a  most  respectable  black 
alpaca  gown.  Her  nose  was  large,  her  complexion  dull, 
but  she  carried  herself  so  commandingly  as  to  be  almost 
handsome  and  very  formidable. 

'  "Oh,  dear!"     Gertie  stamped  her  foot.     "Now  I  got  to 
go  in.     I  never  can  have  any  fun.     Good-by,  Carl 

He  urgently  interrupted  her  tragic  farewell.  "Say! 
Gee  whillikinsi  I  know  what  we'll  do.  You  sneak  out 
the  back  door  and  I'll  meet  you,  and  we'll  run  away 
and  go  seek-our-fortunes  and  we'll  find  your  cousin ' 

"Gerrrtrrrude!"  from  the  stoop. 

"Yes,  mamma,  I'm  just  coming."  To  Carl:  "'Sides, 
I'm  older  'n  you  and  I'm  'most  grown-up,  and  I  don't 
believe  in  Santy  Claus,  and  onc't  I  taught  the  infant  class 
at  St.  Chrysostom's  Sunday-school  when  the  teacher 
wasn't  there;  anyway,  I  and  Miss  Bessie  did,  and  I  asked 
them  'most  all  the  questions  about  the  trumpets  and 
pitchers.  So  I  couldn't  run  away.  I'm  too  old." 

"Gerrrtrrrude,  come  here  this  instant!" 

"Come  on.     I'll  be  waiting,"  Carl  demanded. 

She  was  gone.  She  was  being  ushered  into  the  House 
of  Mysterious  Shutters  by  Mrs.  Cowles.  Carl  prowled 
down  the  street,  a  fine,  new,  long  stick  at  his  side,  like  a 
saber.  He  rounded  the  block,  and  waited  back  of  the 
Cowles  carriage-shed,  doing  sentry-go  and  planning  the 
number  of  parrots  and  pieces  of  eight  he  would  bring 

13 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

back  from  San  Francisco.  Then  his  father  and  mother 
would  be  sorry  they'd  talked  about  him  in  their  Nor- 
wegian! 

"Carl!"  Gertie  was  running  around  the  corner  of  the 
carriage-shed.  "Oh,  Carl,  I  had  to  come  out  and  see  you 
again,  but  I  can't  go  seek-our-fortunes  with  you,  'cause 
they've  got  the  piano  moved  in  now  and  I  got  to  practise, 
else  I'll  grow  up  just  an  ignorant  common  person,  and, 
besides,  there's  going  to  be  tea-biscuits  and  honey  for 
supper.  I  saw  the  honey." 

He  smartly  swung  his  saber  to  his  shoulder,  ordering, 
"Come  on!" 

Gertie  edged  forward,  perplexedly  sucking  a  finger-joint, 
and  followed  him  along  Lake  Street  toward  open  country. 
They  took  to  the  Minnesota  &  Dakota  railroad  track,  a 
natural  footpath  in  a  land  where  the  trains  were  few  and 
not  fast,  as  was  the  condition  of  the  single-tracked  M.  & 
D.  of  1893.  In  a  worried  manner  Carl  inquired  whether 
San  Francisco  was  northwest  or  southeast — the  directions 
in  which  ran  all  self-respecting  railroads.  Gertie  blandly 
declared  that  it  lay  to  the  northwest;  and  northwest  they 
started — toward  the  swamps  and  the  first  forests  of  the 
Big  Woods. 

He  had  wonderlands  to  show  her  along  the  track.  To 
him  every  detail  was  of  scientific  importance.  He  knew 
intimately  the  topography  of  the  fields  beside  the  track; 
in  which  corner  of  Tubbs's  pasture,  between  the  track  and 
the  lake,  the  scraggly  wild  clover  grew,  and  down  what 
part  of  the  gravel-bank  it  was  most  exciting  to  roll.  As 
far  along  the  track  as  the  Arch,  each  railroad  tie  (or 
sleeper)  had  for  him  a  personality:  the  fat,  white  tie, 
which  oozed  at  the  end  into  an  awkward  knob,  he  had 
always  hated  because  it  resembled  a  flattened  grub;  a 
new  tamarack  tie  with  a  sliver  of  fresh  bark  still  on  it, 
recently  put  in  by  the  section  gang,  was  an  entertaining 
stranger;  and  he  particularly  introduced  Gertie  to  his 
favorite,  a  wine-colored  tie  which  always  smiled. 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Gertie,  though  noblesse  oblige  compelled  her  to  be  gra- 
cious to  the  imprisoned  ties  writhing  under  the  steel  rails, 
did  not  really  show  much  enthusiasm  till  he  led  her  to  the 
justly  celebrated  Arch.  Even  then  she  boasted  of  Minne- 
haha  Falls  and  Fort  Snelling  and  Lake  Calhoun;  but,  upon 
his  grieved  solicitation,  declared  that,  after  all,  the  Twin 
Cities  had  nothing  to  compare  with  the  Arch — a  sand- 
stone tunnel  full  twenty  feet  high,  miraculously  boring 
through  the  railroad  embankment,  and  faced  with  great 
stones  which  you  could  descend  by  lowering  yourself  from 
stone  to  stone.  Through  the  Arch  ran  the  creek,  with 
rare  minnows  in  its  pools,  while  important  paths  led 
from  the  creek  to  a  wilderness  of  hazelnut-bushes.  He 
taught  her  to  tear  the  drying  husks  from  the  nuts  and 
crack  the  nuts  with  stones.  At  his  request  Gertie  pro- 
duced two  pins  from  unexpected  parts  of  her  small  frilly 
dress.  He  found  a  piece  of  string,  and  they  fished  for 
perch  in  the  creek.  As  they  had  no  bait  whatever,  their 
success  was  not  large. 

A  flock  of  ducks  flew  low  above  them,  seeking  a  pond 
for  the  night. 

"Jiminy!"  Carl  cried,  "it's  getting  late.  We  got  to 
hurry.  It's  awful  far  to  San  Francisco  and — I  don't 
know — gee!  where'll  we  sleep  to-night?" 

"We  hadn't  ought  to  go  on,  had  we?" 

"Yes!    Come  onl" 


CHAPTER  II 

FROM  the  creek  they  tramped  nearly  two  miles, 
through  the  dark  gravel-banks  of  the  railroad  cut, 
across  the  high  trestle  over  Joralemon  River  where  Gertie 
had  to  be  coaxed  from  stringer  to  stringer.  They  stopped 
only  when  a  gopher  in  a  clearing  demanded  attention. 
Gertie  finally  forgot  the  superiority  of  age  when  she  saw 
Carl  whistle  the  quivering  gopher-cry,  while  the  gopher 
sat  as  though  hypnotized  on  his  pile  of  fresh  black  earth. 
Carl  stalked  him.  As  always  happened,  the  gopher 
popped  into  his  hole  just  before  Carl  reached  him;  but 
it  certainly  did  seem  that  he  had  nearly  been  caught; 
and  Gertie  was  jumping  with  excitement  when  Carl  re- 
turned, strutting,  cocking  his  saber-stick  over  his  shoulder. 

Gertie  was  tired.  She,  the  Minneapolis  girl,  had  not 
been  much  awed  by  the  railroad  ties  nor  the  Arch,  but 
now  she  tramped  proudly  beside  the  man  who  could 
catch  gophers,  till  Carl  inquired: 

"Are  you  gettin'  awful  hungry?  It's  a'most  supper- 
time." 

"Yes,  I  am  hungry,"  trustingly. 

"  I'm  going  to  go  and  swipe  some  'taters.  I  guess  may- 
be there's  a  farm-house  over  there.  I  see  a  chimbly  be- 
yond the  slough.  You  stay  here." 

"I  dassn't  stay  alone.  Oh,  I  better  go  home.  I'm 
scared." 

"Come  on.     I  won't  let  nothing  hurt  you." 

They  circled  a  swamp  surrounded  by  woods,  Carl's 
left  arm  about  her,  his  right  clutching  the  saber.  Though 
the  sunset  was  magnificent  and  a  gay  company  of  black- 

16 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

birds  swayed  on  the  reeds  of  the  slough,  dusk  was  sneak- 
ing out  from  the  underbrush  that  blurred  the  forest  floor, 
and  Gertie  caught  the  panic  fear.  She  wished  to  go  home 
at  once.  She  saw  darkness  reaching  for  them.  Her 
mother  would  unquestionably  whip  her  for  staying  out 
so  late.  She  discovered  a  mud-smear  on  the  side  of  her 
skirt,  and  a  shoe-button  was  gone.  She  was  cold.  Fi- 
nally, if  she  missed  supper  at  home  she  would  get  no  tea- 
biscuits  and  honey.  Gertie's  polite  little  stomach  knew 
its  rights  and  insisted  upon  them. 

"I  wish  I  hadn't  come!"  she  lamented.  "I  wish  I 
hadn't.  Do  you  s'pose  mamma  will  be  dreadfully 
angry?  Won't  you  'splain  to  her?  You  will,  won't 
you?" 

It  was  Carl's  duty,  as  officer  commanding,  to  watch 
the  blackened  stumps  that  sprang  from  the  underbrush. 
And  there  was  Something,  'way  over  in  the  woods,  beyond 
the  trees  horribly  gashed  to  whiteness  by  lightning.  Per- 
haps the  Something  hadn't  moved;  perhaps  it  was  a 
stump 

But  he  answered  her  loudly,  so  that  lurking  robbers 
might  overhear:  "I  know  a  great  big  man  over  there, 
and  he's  a  friend  of  mine;  he's  a  brakie  on  the  M.  &  D., 
and  he  lets  me  ride  in  the  caboose  any  time  I  want  to, 
and  he's  right  behind  us.  (I  was  just  making  b'lieve, 
Gertie;  I'll  'splain  everything  to  your  mother.)  He's 
bigger  'n  anybody!"  More  conversationally:  "Aw,  Jim- 
iny!  Gertie,  don't  cry!  Please  don't.  I'll  take  care  of 
you.  And  if  you  ain't  going  to  have  any  supper  we'll 
swipe  some  'taters  and  roast  'em."  He  gulped.  He 
hated  to  give  up,  to  return  to  woodshed  and  chicken-yard, 
but  he  conceded:  "I  guess  maybe  we  hadn't  better  go 
seek-our-fortunes  no  more  to 

A  long  wail  tore  through  the  air.  The  children  shrieked 
together  and  fled,  stumbling  in  dry  bog,  weeping  in  terror. 
Carl's  backbone  was  all  one  prickling  bar  of  ice.  But  he 
waved  his  stick  fiercely,  and,  because  he  had  to  care  for 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

her,  was  calm  enough  to  realize  that  the  wail  must  have 
been  the  cry  of  the  bittern. 

"It  wasn't  nothing  but  a  bird,  Gertie;  it  can't  hurt 
us.  Heard  'em  lots  of  times." 

Nevertheless,  he  was  still  trembling  when  they  reached 
the  edge  of  a  farm-yard  clearing  beyond  the  swamp. 
It  was  gray-dark.  They  could  see  only  the  mass  of  a 
barn  and  a  farmer's  cabin,  both  new  to  Carl.  Holding  her 
hand,  he  whispered: 

"They  must  be  some  'taters  or  'beggies  in  the  barn. 
I'll  sneak  in  and  see.  You  stand  here  by  the  corn-crib 
and  work  out  some  ears  between  the  bars.  See — like 
this." 

He  left  her.  The  sound  of  her  frightened  snivel  aged 
him.  He  tiptoed  to  the  barn  door,  eying  a  light  in  the 
farm-house.  He  reached  far  up  to  the  latch  of  the  broad 
door  and  pulled  out  the  wooden  pin.  The  latch  slipped 
noisily  from  its  staple.  The  door  opened  with  a  groaning 
creek  and  banged  against  the  barn. 

Paralyzed,  hearing  all  the  silence  of  the  wild  clearing, 
he  waited.  There  was  a  step  in  the  house.  The  door 
opened.  A  huge  farmer,  tousle-haired,  black-bearded, 
held  up  a  lamp  and  peered  out.  It  was  the  Black  Dutch- 
man. 

The  Black  Dutchman  was  a  living  legend.  He  often 
got  drunk  and  rode  past  Carl's  home  at  night,  lashing 
his  horses  and  cursing  in  German.  He  had  once  thrashed 
the  school-teacher  for  whipping  his  son.  He  had  no 
friends. 

"Oh  dear,  oh  dear,  I  wisht  I  was  home!"  sobbed  Carl; 
but  he  started  to  run  to  Gertie's  protection. 

The  Black  Dutchman  set  down  the  lamp.  "Wer  ist 
da?  I  see  you!  Damnation!"  he  roared,  and  lumbered 
out,  seizing  a  pitchfork  from  the  manure-pile. 

Carl  galloped  up  to  Gertie,  panting,  "He's  after  us!" 
and  dragged  her  into  the  hazel-bushes  beyond  the  corn- 
crib.  As  his  country-bred  feet  found  and  followed  a  path 

IS 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

toward  deeper  woods,  he  heard  the  Black  Dutchman 
beating  the  bushes  with  his  pitchfork,  shouting : 

"Hiding!     I  know  vere  you  are!     Hah!" 

Carl  jerked  his  companion  forward  till  he  lost  the  path. 
There  was  no  light.  They  could  only  crawl  on  through 
the  bushes,  whose  malicious  ringers  stung  Gertie's  face 
and  plucked  at  her  proud  frills.  He  lifted  her  over  fallen 
trees,  freed  her  from  branches,  and  all  the  time,  between  his 
own  sobs,  he  encouraged  her  and  tried  to  pretend  that  their 
incredible  plight  was  not  the  end  of  the  world,  whimpering: 

"We're  a'most  on  the  road  now,  Gertie;  honest  we 
are.  I  can't  hear  him  now.  I  ain't  afraid  of  him — he 
wouldn't  dast  hurt  us  or  my  pa  would  fix  him." 

"Oh!  I  hear  him!  He's  coming!  Oh,  please  save 
me,  Carl!" 

"Gee!  run  fast!  .  .  .  Aw,  I  don't  hear  him.  I  ain't 
afraid  of  him!" 

They  burst  out  on  a  grassy  woodland  road  and  lay 
down,  panting.  They  could  see  a  strip  of  stars  overhead; 
and  the  world  was  dark,  silent,  in  the  inscrutable  night 
of  autumn.  Carl  said  nothing.  He  tried  to  make  out 
where  they  were — where  this  road  would  take  them.  It 
might  run  deeper  into  the  woods,  which  he  did  not  know 
as  he  did  the  Arch  environs;  and  he  had  so  twisted 
through  the  brush  that  he  could  not  tell  in  what  direction 
lay  either  the  main  wagon-road  or  the  M.  &  D.  track. 

He  lifted  her  up,  and  they  plodded  hand  in  hand  till 
she  said: 

"I'm  awful  tired.  It's  awful  cold.  My  feet  hurt  aw- 
fully. Carl  dear,  oh,  pleassssse  take  me  home  now.  I 
want  my  mamma.  Maybe  she  won't  whip  me  now.  It's 

so  dark  and — ohhhhhh : '  She  muttered,  incoherently: 

"There!  By  the  road!  He's  waiting  for  us!"  She  sank 
down,  her  arm  over  her  face,  groaning,  "Don't  hurt  me!" 

Carl  straddled  before  her,  on  guard.  There  was  a  dis- 
torted mass  crouched  by  the  road  just  ahead.  He  tingled 
with  the  chill  of  fear,  down  through  his  thighs.  He  had 

19 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

lost  his  stick-saber,  but  he  bent,  felt  for,  and  found  another 
stick,  and  piped  to  the  shadowy  watcher: 

"I  ain't  af-f-fraid  of  you!     You  gwan  away  from  here!" 

The  watcher  did  not  answer. 

"I  know  who  you  are!"  Bellowing  with  fear,  Carl 
ran  forward,  furiously  waving  his  stick  and  clamoring: 
"You  better  not  touch  me!"  The  stick  came  down 
with  a  silly,  flat  clack  upon  the  watcher — a  roadside 
boulder.  "It's  just  a  rock,  Gertie!  Jiminy,  I'm  glad! 
It's  just  a  rock!  .  .  .  Aw,  I  knew  it  was  a  rock  all  the 
time!  Ben  Rusk  gets  scared  every  time  he  sees  a  stump 
in  the  woods,  and  he  always  thinks  it's  a  robber." 

Chattily,  Carl  went  back,  lifted  her  again,  endured  her 
kissing  his  cheek,  and  they  started  on. 

"I'm  so  cold,"  Gertie  moaned  from  time  to  time,  till 
he  offered : 

"I'll  try  and  build  a  fire.  Maybe  we  better  camp.  I 
got  a  match  what  I  swiped  from  the  kitchen.  Maybe  I 
can  make  a  fire,  so  we  better  camp." 

"I  don't  want  to  camp.     I  want  to  go  home." 

"I  don't  know  where  we  are,  I  told  you." 

"Can  you  make  a  regular  camp-fire?     Like  Indians?" 

"Um-huh." 

"Let's.  .  .  .  But  I  rather  go  home." 

"You  ain't  scared  now.  Are  you,  Gertie?  Gee!  you're 
a'  awful  brave  girl!" 

"No,  but  I'm  cold  and  I  wisht  we  had  some  tea-bis- 
cuits  " 

Ever  too  complacent  was  Miss  Gertrude  Cowles,  the 
Good  Girl  in  whatever  group  she  joined;  but  she  seemed 
to  trust  in  Carl's  heroism,  and  as  she  murmured  of  a 
certain  chilliness  she  seemed  to  take  it  for  granted  that 
he  would  immediately  bring  her  some  warmth.  Carl 
had  never  heard  of  the  romantic  males  who,  in  fiction,  so 
frequently  offer  their  coats  to  ladies  fair  but  chill;  yet 
he  stripped  off  his  jacket  and  wrapped  it  about  her,  while 
his  gingham-clad  shoulders  twitched  with  cold. 

20 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"I  can  hear  a  crick,  'way,  'way  over  there.  Le's  camp 
by  it,"  he  decided. 

They  scrambled  through  the  brush,  Carl  leading  her 
and  feeling  the  way.  He  found  a  patch  of  long  grass 
beside  the  creek;  with  only  his  tremulous  hands  for  eyes 
he  gathered  leaves,  twigs,  and  dead  branches,  and  piled 
them  together  in  a  pyramid,  as  he  had  been  taught  to  do 
by  the  older  woods-faring  boys. 

It  was  still;  'no  wind;  but  Carl,  who  had  gobbled  up 
every  word  he  had  heard  about  deer-hunting  in  the  north 
woods,  got  a  great  deal  of  interesting  fear  out  of  dreading 
what  might  happen  if  his  one  match  did  not  light.  He 
made  Gertie  kneel  beside  him  with  the  jacket  outspread,1 
and  he  hesitated  several  times  before  he  scratched  the 
match.  It  flared  up;  the  leaves  caught;  the  pile  of  twigs 
was  instantly  aflame. 

He  wept,  ''Jimmy,  if  it  hadn't  lighted!  .  .  ."  By  and 
by  he  announced,  loudly,  "I  wasn't  afraid,"  to  convince 
himself,  and  sat  up,  throwing  twigs  on  the  fire  grandly. 

Gertie,  who  didn't  really  appreciate  heroism,  sighed, 
"I'm  hungry  and " 

"My  second-grade  teacher  told  us  a  story  how  they 
was  a'  arctic  explorer  and  he  was  out  in  a  blizzard ' 

" and  I  wish  we  had  some  tea-biscuits,"  concluded 

Gertie,  companionably  but  firmly. 

"I'll  go  pick  some  hazelnuts." 

He  left  her  feeding  the  flame.  As  he  crept  away,  the  fire 
behind  him,  he  was  dreadfully  frightened,  now  that  he 
had  no  one  to  protect.  A  few  yards  from  the  fire  he 
stopped  in  terror.  He  clutched  a  branch  so  tightly  that 
it  creased  his  palm.  Two  hundred  yards  away,  across 
the  creek,  was  the  small  square  of  a  lighted  window  hov- 
ering detached  in  the  darkness. 

For  a  panic-filled  second  Carl  was  sure  that  it  must 
be  the  Black  Dutchman's  window.  His  tired  child-mind 
whined.  But  there  was  no  creek  near  the  Black  Dutch- 
man's. Though  he  did  not  want  to  venture  up  to  the 

21 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

unknown  light,  he  growled,  "I  will  if  I  want  to!"  and 
limped  forward. 

He  had  to  cross  the  creek,  the  strange  creek  whose 
stepping-stones  he  did  not  know.  Shivering,  hesitant,  he 
stripped  off  his  shoes  and  stockings  and  dabbled  the  edge 
of  the  water  with  reluctant  toes,  to  see  if  it  was  cold. 
It  was. 

"Dog-gone!"  he  swore,  mightily.  He  plunged  in, 
waded  across. 

He  found  a  rock  and  held  it  ready  to  throw  at  the  dog 
that  was  certain  to  come  snapping  at  him  as  he  tiptoed 
through  the  clearing.  His  wet  legs  smarted  with  cold. 
The  fact  that  he  was  trespassing  made  him  feel  more  for- 
lornly lost  than  ever.  But  he  stumbled  up  to  the  one- 
room  shack  that  was  now  shaping  itself  against  the  sky. 
It  was  a  house  that,  he  believed,  he  had  never  seen  be- 
fore. When  he  reached  it  he  stood  for  fully  a  minute, 
afraid  to  move.  But  from  across  the  creek  whimpered 
Gertie's  call: 

"Carl,  oh,  Carl,  where  are  you?" 

He  had  to  hurry.  He  crept  along  the  side  of  the  shack 
to  the  window.  It  was  too  high  in  the  wall  for  him  to 
peer  through.  He  felt  for  something  to  stand  upon,  and 
found  a  short  board,  which  he  wedged  against  the  side 
of  the  shack. 

He  looked  through  the  dusty  window  for  a  second. 
He  sprang  from  the  board. 

Alone  in  the  shack  was  the  one  person  about  Joralemon 
more  feared,  more  fabulous  than  the  Black  Dutchman — 
"Bone"  Stillman,  the  man  who  didn't  believe  in  God. 

Bone  Stillman  read  Robert  G.  Ingersoll,  and  said  what 
he  thought.  Otherwise  he  was  not  dangerous  to  the  pub- 
lic peace;  a  lone  old  bachelor  farmer.  It  was  said  that 
he  had  been  a  sailor  or  a  policeman,  a  college  professor  or 
a  priest,  a  forger  or  an  embezzler.  Nothing  positive  was 
known  except  that  three  years  ago  he  had  appeared  and 
bought  this  farm.  He  was  a  grizzled  man  of  fifty-five, 

22 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

with  a  long,  tobacco-stained,  gray  mustache  and  an 
open-necked  blue-flannel  shirt.  To  Carl,  beside  the 
shack,  Bone  Stillman  was  all  that  was  demoniac. 

Gertie  was  calling  again.  Carl  climbed  upon  his  board 
and  resumed  his  inspection,  seeking  a  course  of  action. 

The  one-room  shack  was  lined  with  tar-paper,  on  which 
were  pinned  lithographs  of  Robert  G.  Ingersoll,  Karl 
Marx,  and  Napoleon.  Under  a  gun-rack  made  of  deer 
antlers  was  a  cupboard  half  filled  with  dingy  books, 
shotgun  shells,  and  fishing  tackle.  Bone  was  reading  by 
a  pine  table  still  littered  with  supper-dishes.  Before  him 
lay  a  clean-limbed  English  setter.  The  dog  was  asleep. 
In  the  shack  was  absolute  stillness  and  loneliness  in- 
timidating. 

While  Carl  watched,  Bone  dropped  his  book  and  said, 
"Here,  Bob,  what  d'you  think  of  single-tax,  heh?" 

Carl  gazed  apprehensively.  .  .  .  No  one  but  Bone  was  in 
the  shack.  ...  It  was  said  that  the  devil  himself  sometimes 
visited  here.  .  .  .  On  Carl  was  the  chill  of  a  nightmare. 

The  dog  raised  his  head,  stirred,  blinked,  pounded  his 
tail  on  the  floor,  and  rose,  a  gentlemanly,  affable  chap,  to 
lay  his  muzzle  on  Bone's  knee  while  the  solitary  droned : 

"This  fellow  says  in  this  book  here  that  the  city  's 
the  natural  place  to  live — aboriginal  tribes  prove  man  's 
naturally  gregarious.  What  d'you  think  about  it,  heh, 
Bob?  .  .  .  Bum  country,  this  is.  No  thinking.  What  in 
the  name  of  the  seven  saintly  sisters  did  I  ever  want  to 
be  a  farmer  for,  heh  ? 

"Let's  skedaddle,  Bob. 

"I  ain't  an  atheist.     I'm  an  agnostic. 

"Lonely,  Bob?  Go  over  and  talk  to  his  whiskers, 
Karl  Marx.  He's  liberal.  He  don't  care  what  you  say. 

He Oh,  shut  up!  You're  damn  poor  company. 

Say  something!" 

Carl,  still  motionless,  was  the  more  agonized  because 
there  was  no  sound  from  Gertie,  not  even  a  sobbing  call. 
Anything  might  have  happened  to  her.  While  he  was 

23 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

coaxing  himself  to  knock  on  the  pane,  Stillman  puttered 
about  the  shack,  petting  the  dog,  filling  his  pipe.  He 
passed  out  of  Carl's  range  of  vision  toward  the  side  of 
the  room  in  which  was  the  window. 

A  huge  hand  jerked  the  window  open  and  caught  Carl 
by  the  hair.  Two  wild  faces  stared  at  each  other,  six 
inches  apart. 

"I  saw  you.  Came  here  to  plague  me!"  roared  Bone 
Stillman. 

"Oh,  mister,  oh  please,  mister,  I  wasn't.  Me  and  Gertie 

is  lost  in  the  woods — we Ouch!  Oh,  please  lemme 

go!" 

"Why,  you're  just  a  brat!     Come  here." 

The  lean  arm  of  Bone  Stillman  dragged  Carl  through 
the  window  by  the  slack  of  his  gingham  waist. 

"Lost,  heh?    Where's  t'other  one — Gertie,  was  it?" 

"She's  over  in  the  woods." 

"Poor  little  tyke!     Wait  '11  I  light  my  lantern." 

The  swinging  lantern  made  friendly  ever-changing  circles 
of  light,  and  Carl  no  longer  feared  the  dangerous  terri- 
tory of  the  yard.  Riding  pick-a-back  on  Bone  Still- 
man, he  looked  down  contentedly  on  the  dog's  deferential 
tail  beside  them.  They  found  Gertie  asleep  by  the  fire. 
She  scarcely  awoke  as  Stillman  picked  her  up  and  carried 
her  back  to  his  shack.  She  nestled  her  downy  hair  be- 
neath his  chin  and  closed  her  eyes. 

Stillman  said,  cheerily,  as  he  ushered  them  into  his 
mansion:  "I'll  hitch  up  and  take  you  back  to  town. 
You  young  tropical  tramps!  First  you  better  have  a 
bite  to  eat,  though.  What  do  kids  eat,  bub  ?" 

The  dog  was  nuzzling  Carl's  hand,  and  Carl  had  al- 
most forgotten  his  fear  that  the  devil  might  appear.  He 
was  flatteringly  friendly  in  his  answer:  "Porritch  and 
meat  and  potatoes — only  I  don't  like  potatoes,  and — pie!" 
"Fraid  I  haven't  any  pie,  but  how'd  some  bacon  and 
eggs  go?"  As  he  stoked  up  his  cannon-ball  stove  and 
sliced  the  bacon,  Stillman  continued  to  the  children,  who 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

were  shyly  perched  on  the  buffalo-robe  cover  of  his  bed, 
"Were  you  scared  in  the  woods?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Don't  ever  for Da Blast  that  egg!  Don't  for- 
get this,  son:  nothing  outside  of  you  can  ever  hurt  you. 
It  can  chew  up  your  toes,  but  it  can't  reach  you.  Nobody 
but  you  can  hurt  you.  Let  me  try  to  make  that  clear, 
old  man,  if  I  can.  .  .  . 

"There's  your  fodder.  Draw  up  and  set  to.  Pretty 
sleepy,  are  you?  I'll  tell  you  a  story.  J'  like  to  hear 
about  how  Napoleon  smashed  the  theory  of  divine  rule, 
or  about  how  me  and  Charlie  Weems  explored  Tiburon? 
Well " 

Though  Carl  afterward  remembered  not  one  word  of 
what  Bone  Stillman  said,  it  is  possible  that  the  outcast's 
treatment  of  him  as  a  grown-up  friend  was  one  of  the 
most  powerful  of  the  intangible  influences  which  were  to 
push  him  toward  the  great  world  outside  of  Joralemon. 
The  school-bound  child — taught  by  young  ladies  that  the 
worst  immorality  was  whispering  in  school;  the  chief 
virtue,  a  dull  quietude — was  here  first  given  a  reasonable 
basis  for  supposing  that  he  was  not  always  to  be  a  back- 
yard boy. 

The  man  in  the  flannel  shirt,  who  chewed  tobacco, 
who  wrenched  infinitives  apart  and  thrust  profane  words 
between,  was  for  fifteen  minutes  Carl's  Froebel  and 
Montessori. 

Carl's  recollection  of  listening  to  Bone  blurs  into  one 
of  being  somewhere  in  the  back  of  a  wagon  beside  Gertie, 
wrapped  in  buffalo  robes,  and  of  being  awakened  by  the 
stopping  of  the  wagon  when  Bone  called  to  a  band  of 
men  with  lanterns  who  were  searching  for  the  missing 
Gertie.  Apparently  the  next  second  he  was  being  lifted 
out  before  his  home,  and  his  aproned  mother  was  kissing 
him  and  sobbing,  "Oh,  my  boy!"  He  snuggled  his  head 
on  her  shoulder  and  said: 

"I'm  cold.     But  I'm  going  to  San  Francisco." 


CHAPTER  III 

ERICSON,  grown  to  sixteen  and  long  trousers, 
trimmed  the  arc-lights  for  the  Joralemon  Power  and 
Lighting  Company,  after  school;  then  at  Eddie  Klemm's 
billiard-parlor  he  won  two  games  of  Kelly  pool,  smoked 
a  cigarette  of  flake  tobacco  and  wheat-straw  paper,  and 
"chipped  in"  five  cents  toward  a  can  of  beer.  ' 

A  slender  Carl,  hesitating  in  speech,  but  with  plenty 
to  say;  rangy  as  a  setter  pup,  silken-haired;  his  Scandi- 
navian cheeks  like  petals  at  an  age  when  his  companions' 
faces  were  like  maps  of  the  moon;  stubborn  and  healthy; 
wearing  a  celluloid  collar  and  a  plain  black  four-in-hand; 
a  blue-eyed,  undistinguished,  awkward,  busy  proletarian 
of  sixteen,  to  whom  evening  clothes  and  poetry  did  not 
exist,  but  who  quivered  with  inarticulate  determinations 
to  see  Minneapolis,  or  even  Chicago.  To  him  it  was  sheer 
romance  to  parade  through  town  with  a  tin  haversack  of 
carbons  for  the  arc-lights,  familiarly  lowering  the  high- 
hung  mysterious  lamps,  while  his  plodding  acquaintances 
"clerked"  in  stores  on  Saturdays,  or  tended  furnaces. 
Sometimes  he  donned  the  virile — and  noisy — uniform  of 
an  electrician:  army  gauntlets,  a  coil  of  wire,  pole-climb- 
ers strapped  to  his  legs.  Crunching  his  steel  spurs  into 
the  crisp  pine  wood  of  the  lighting-poles,  he  carelessly 
ascended  to  the  place  of  humming  wires  and  red  cross- 
bars and  green-glass  insulators,  while  crowds  of  two  and 
three  small  boys  stared  in  awe  from  below.  At  such  mo- 
ments Carl  did  not  envy  the  aristocratic  leisure  of  his 
high-school  classmate,  Fatty  Ben  Rusk,  who,  as  son  of 
the  leading  doctor,  did  not  work,  but  stayed  home  and 
read  library  books. 

26 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Carl's  own  home  was  not  adapted  to  the  enchantments 
of  a  boy's  reading.  Perfectly  comfortable  it  was,  and 
clean  with  the  hard  cleanness  that  keeps  oilcloth  looking 
perpetually  unused,  but  it  was  so  airlessly  respectable 
that  it  doubled  Carl's  natural  restlessness.  It  had  been 
old  Oscar  Ericson's  labor  of  love,  but  the  carpenter  loved 
shininess  more  than  space  and  leisure.  His  model  for  a 
house  would  have  been  a  pine  dry-goods  box  grained  in 
imitation  of  oak.  Oscar  Ericson  radiated  intolerance 
and  a  belief  in  unimaginative,  unresting  labor.  Every 
evening,  collarless  and  carpet-slippered,  ruffling  his  broom- 
colored  hair  or  stroking  his  large,  long  chin,  while  his  shirt- 
tab  moved  ceaselessly  in  time  to  his  breathing,  he  read  a 
Norwegian  paper.  Carl's  mother  darned  woolen  socks 
and  thought  about  milk-pans  and  the  neighbors  and  break- 
fast. The  creak  of  rockers  filled  the  unventilated,  oil- 
cloth-floored sitting-room.  The  sound  was  as  unchanging 
as  the  sacred  positions  of  the  crayon  enlargement  of  Mrs. 
Ericson's  father,  the  green-glass  top-hat  for  matches,  or 
the  violent  ingrain  rug  with  its  dog's-head  pattern. 

Carl's  own  room  contained  only  plaster  walls,  a  narrow 
wooden  bed,  a  bureau,  a  kitchen  chair.  Fifteen  minutes 
in  this  irreproachable  home  sent  Carl  off  to  Eddie  Klemm's 
billiard-parlor,  which  was  not  irreproachable. 

He  rather  disliked  the  bitterness  of  beer  and  the  acrid 
specks  of  cigarette  tobacco  that  stuck  to  his  lips,  but  the 
"bunch  at  Eddie's"  were  among  the  few  people  in  Jorale- 
mon  who  were  conscious  of  life.  Eddie's  establishment 
was  a  long,  white-plastered  room  with  a  pressed-steel 
ceiling  and  an  unswept  floor.  On  the  walls  were  billiard- 
table-makers'  calendars  and  a  collection  of  cigarette- 
premium  chromos  portraying  bathing  girls.  The  girls 
were  of  lithographic  complexions,  almost  too  perfect  of 
feature,  and  their  lips  were  more  than  ruby.  Carl  ad- 
mired them. 

A    September    afternoon.     The    sixteen-year-old    Carl 
3  27 


THE   TRAIL    OF    THE    HAWK 

was  tipped  back  in  a  chair  at  Eddie  Klemm's,  one  foot  on 
a  rung,  while  he  discussed  village  scandals  and  told  out- 
rageous stories  with  Eddie  Klemm,  a  brisk  money-maker 
and  vulgarian  aged  twenty-three,  who  wore  a  "fancy 
vest"  and  celluloid  buttons  on  his  lapels.  Ben  Rusk 
hesitatingly  poked  his  head  through  the  door. 

Eddie  Klemm  called,  with  business-like  cordiality: 
"H'lo,  Fatty!  Come  in.  How's  your  good  health? 
Haven't  reformed,  have  you?  Going  to  join  us  rough- 
necks? Come  on;  I'll  teach  you  to  play  pool.  Won't 
cost  you  a  cent." 

"No,  I  guess  I  hadn't  better.  I  was  just  looking  for 
Carl." 

"Well,  well,  Fatty,  ain't  we  ree-fined!  Why  do  we 
guess  WTC  hadn't  to  probably  maybe  oughtn't  to  had 
better?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  Some  day  I'll  learn,  I  guess," 
sighed  Fatty  Ben  Rusk,  who  knew  perfectly  that  with  a 
doctor  father,  a  religious  mother,  and  an  effeminate  taste 
for  reading  he  could  never  be  a  town  sport. 

"Hey!  watch  out!"  shrieked  Eddie. 

"Wh-what's  the  matter?"  gasped  Fatty. 

"The  floor  's  falling  on  you!" 

"Th — th Aw,  say,  you're  kidding  me,"  said  Fatty, 

weakly,  with  a  propitiating  smile. 

"Don't  worn*,  son;  you're  the  third  guy  to-day  that 
I've  caught  on  that!  Stick  around,  son,  and  sit  in  any 
time,  and  I'll  learn  you  some  pool.  You  got  just  the  right 
build  for  a  champ  player.  Have  a  cigarette?" 

The  social  amenities  whereby  Joralemon  prepares  her 
youth  for  the  graces  of  life  having  been  recognized,  Fatty 
Rusk  hitched  a  chair  beside  Carl,  and  muttered: 

" Say,  Carl,  here's  what  I  wanted  to  tell  you:  I  was  just 
up  to  the  Cowleses'  to  take  back  a  French  grammar  I  bor- 
rowed to  look  at Maybe  that  ain't  a  hard-looking 

language!  What  d'you  think?  Mrs.  Cowles  told  me 
Gertie  is  expected  back  to-morrow." 

28 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Gee  whiz!  I  thought  she  was  going  to  stay  in  New 
York  for  two  years!  And  she's  only  been  gone  six 
months." 

"I  guess  Mrs.  Cowles  is  kind  of  lonely  without  her," 
Ben  mooned. 

"So  now  you'll  be  all  nice  and  in  love  with  Gertie  again, 
heh?  It  certainly  gets  me  why  you  want  to  fall  in  love, 
Fatty,  when  you  could  go  hunting." 

"If  you'd  read  about  King  Arthur  and  Galahad  and 
all  them  instead  of  reading  the  Scientific  American,  and 

about  these  fool  horseless  carriages  and  stuff There 

never  will  be  any  practical  use  for  horseless  carriages, 
anyway." 

"There  will "  growled  Carl. 

"My  mother  says  she  don't  believe  the  Lord  ever  in- 
tended us  to  ride  without  horses,  or  what  did  He  give  us 
horses  for?  And  the  things  always  get  stuck  in  the  mud 
and  you  have  to  walk  home — mother  was  reading  that  in 
a  newspaper,  just  the  other  day." 

"Son,  let  me  tell  you,  I'll  own  a  horseless  carriage  some 
day,  and  I  bet  I  go  an  average  of  twenty  miles  an  hour 
with  it,  maybe  forty." 

"Oh,  rats!  But  I  was  saying,  if  you'd  read  some  li- 
brary books  you'd  know  about  love.  Why,  what  Jd  God 
put  love  in  the  world  for ' 

"Say,  will  you  quit  explaining  to  me  about  what  God 
did  things  for?" 

"Ouch!  Quit!  Awwww,  quit,  Carl.  .  .  .  Say,  listen; 
here's  what  I  wanted  to  tell  you:  How  if  you  and  me  and 
Adelaide  Benner  and  some  of  us  went  down  to  the  depot 
to  meet  Gertie,  to-morrow?  She  comes  in  on  the  twelve- 
forty-seven." 

"Well,  all  right.  Say,  Bennie,  you  don't  want  to  be 
worried  when  I  kid  you  about  being  in  love  with  Gertie.  I 
don't  think  I'll  ever  get  married.  But  it's  all  right  for  you." 

Saturday  morning  was  so  cool,  so  radiant,  that  Carl 

29 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

awakened  early  to  a  conviction  that,  no  matter  how  im- 
portant meeting  Gertie  might  be  in  the  cosmic  scheme, 
he  was  going  hunting.  He  was  down-stairs  by  five.  He 
fried  two  eggs,  called  Dollar  Ingersoll,  his  dog — son  of 
Robert  Ingersoll  Stillman,  gentleman  dog — then,  in  can- 
vas hunting-coat  and  slouch-hat,  tramped  out  of  town 
southward,  where  the  woods  ended  in  prairie.  Gertie's 
arrival  was  forgotten. 

It  was  a  gipsy  day.  The  sun  rolled  splendidly  through 
the  dry  air,  over  miles  of  wheat  stubble,  whose  gray- 
yellow  prickles  were  transmuted  by  distance  into  tawny 
velvet,  seeming  only  the  more  spacious  because  of  the 
straight,  thin  lines  of  barbed-wire  fences  lined  with  golden- 
rod,  and  solitary  houses  in  willow  groves.  The  dips  and 
curves  of  the  rolling  plain  drew  him  on;  the  distances 
satisfied  his  eyes.  A  pleasant  hum  of  insects  filled  the 
land's  wide  serenity  with  hidden  life. 

Carl  left  a  trail  of  happy,  monotonous  whistling  behind 
him  all  day,  as  his  dog  followed  the  winding  trail  of 
prairie-chickens,  as  a  covey  of  chickens  rose  with  boom- 
ing wings  and  he  swung  his  shotgun  for  a  bead.  He 
stopped  by  prairie-sloughs  or  bright-green  bogs  to  watch 
for  a  duck.  He  hailed  as  equals  the  occasional  groups 
of  hunters  in  two-seated  buggies,  quartering  the  fields 
after  circling  dogs.  He  lunched  contentedly  on  sand- 
wiches of  cold  lamb,  and  lay  with  his  arms  under  his  head, 
gazing  at  a  steeple  fully  ten  miles  away. 

By  six  of  the  afternoon  he  had  seven  prairie-chickens 
tucked  inside  the  long  pocket  that  lined  the  tail  of  his 
coat,  and  he  headed  for  home,  superior  to  miles,  his  quiet 
eyes  missing  none  of  the  purple  asters  and  goldenrod. 

As  he  began  to  think  he  felt  a  bit  guilty.  The  flowers 
suggested  Gertie.  He  gathered  a  large  bunch,  poking 
stalks  of  aster  among  the  goldenrod,  examining  the  re- 
sult at  arm's-length.  Yet  when  he  stopped  at  the  Rusks' 
in  town,  to  bid  Bennie  take  the  rustic  bouquet  to  Gertie, 
he  replied  to  reproaches: 

30 


THE  TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"What  you  making  all  the  fuss  about  my  not  being 
there  to  meet  her  for?  She  got  here  all  right,  didn't  she? 
What  j'  expect  me  to  do ?  Kiss  her?  You  ought  to  known 
it  was  too  good  a  day  for  hunting  to  miss.  .  .  .  How's 
Gert?  Have  a  good  time  in  New  York?" 

Carl  himself  took  the  flowers  to  her,  however,  and  was 
so  shyly  attentive  to  her  account  of  New  York  that  he 
scarcely  stopped  to  speak  to  the  Cowleses'  "hired  girl," 
who  was  his  second  cousin.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Cowles  overheard 
him  shout,  "Hello,  Lena!  How's  it  going?"  to  the  hired 
girl  with  cousinly  ease.  Mrs.  Cowles  seemed  chilly. 
Carl  wondered  why. 

From  month  to  month  of  his  junior  year  in  high  school 
Carl  grew  more  discontented.  He  let  the  lines  of  his 
Cicero  fade  into  a  gray  blur  that  confounded  Cicero's 
blatant  virtue  and  Cataline's  treachery,  while  he  pictured 
himself  tramping  with  snow-shoes  and  a  mackinaw  coat 
into  the  snowy  solemnities  of  the  northern  Minnesota 
tamarack  swamps.  Much  of  his  discontent  was  caused  by 
his  learned  preceptors.  The  teachers  for  this  year  were 
almost  perfectly  calculated  to  make  any  lad  of  the  slight- 
est independence  hate  culture  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
With  the  earnestness  and  industry  usually  ascribed  to  the 
devil,  "Prof"  Sybrant  E.  Larsen  (B.  A.  Platonis),  Miss 
McDonald,  and  Miss  Muzzy  kept  up  ninety-five  per  cent, 
discipline,  and  seven  per  cent,  instruction  in  anything  in 
the  least  worth  while. 

Miss  Muzzy  was  sarcastic,  and  proud  of  it.  She  was 
sarcastic  to  Carl  when  he  gruffly  asked  why  he  couldn't 
study  French  instead  of  "all  this  Latin  stuff."  If  there 
be  any  virtue  in  the  study  of  Latin  (and  we  have  all  for- 
gotten all  our  Latin  except  the  fact  that  "suburb"  means 
"under  the  city" — i.  e.,  a  subway),  Carl  was  blinded  to 
it  for  ever.  Miss  Muzzy  wore  eye-glasses  and  had  no 
bosom.  Carl's  father  used  to  say  approvingly,  "Dat 
Miss  Muzzy  don't  stand  for  no  nonsense,"  and  Mrs.  Dr. 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Rusk  often  had  her  for  dinner.  .  .  .  Miss  McDonald,  fat 
and  slow-spoken  and  kind,  prone  to  use  the  word  "dearie," 
to  read  Longfellow,  and  to  have  buttons  off  her  shirt- 
waists, used  on  Carl  a  feminine  weapon  more  unfair  than 
the  robust  sarcasm  of  Miss  Muzzy.  For  after  irritating 
a  self-respecting  boy  into  rudeness  by  pawing  his  soul 
with  damp,  puffy  hands,  she  would  weep.  She  was  a  kind, 
honest,  and  reverent  bovine.  Carl  sat  under  her  super- 
vision in  the  junior  room,  with  its  hardwood  and  black- 
boards and  plaster,  high  windows  and  portraits  of  Wash- 
ington and  a  President  who  was  either  Madison  or  Monroe 
(no  one  ever  remembered  which).  He  hated  the  eternal 
school  smell  of  drinking-water  pails  and  chalk  and  slates 
and  varnish;  he  loathed  the  blackboard  erasers,  white  with 
crayon-dust;  he  found  inspiration  only  in  the  laboratory 
where  "Prof"  Larsen  mistaught  physics  and  rebuked 
questions  about  the  useless  part  of  chemistry — that  is, 
the  part  that  wasn't  in  their  text-books. 

As  for  literature,  Ben  Rusk  persuaded  him  to  try  Cap- 
tain Marryat  and  Conan  Doyle.  Carl  met  Sherlock 
Holmes  in  a  paper-bound  book,  during  a  wait  for  flocks 
of  mallards  on  the  duck-pass,  which  was  a  little  temple 
of  silver  birches  bare  with  November.  He  crouched 
down  in  his  canvas  coat  and  rubber  boats,  gun  across 
knees,  and  read  for  an  hour  without  moving.  As  he 
tramped  home,  into  a  vast  Minnesota  sunset  like  a  fur- 
nace of  fantastic  coals,  past  the  garnet-tinged  ice  of  lakes, 
he  kept  his  gun  cocked  and  under  his  elbow,  ready  for 
the  royal  robber  who  was  dogging  the  personage  of  Baker 
Street. 

He  hunted  much;  distinguished  himself  in  geometry 
and  chemistry;  nearly  flunked  in  Cicero  and  P^nglish; 
learned  to  play  an  extraordinarily  steady  game  of  bottle 
pool  at  Eddie  Klemm's. 

And  always  Gertie  Cowles,  gently  hesitant  toward 
Ben  Rusk's  affection,  kept  asking  Carl  why  he  didn't 
come  to  see  her  oftener,  and  play  tiddledywinks. 

32 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

On  the  Friday  morning  before  Christmas  vacation, 
Carl  and  Ben  Rusk  were  cleaning  up  the  chemical  labora- 
tory, its  pine  experiment-bench  and  iron  sink  and  rough 
floor.  Bennie  worried  a  rag  in  the  sink  with  the  resigned 
manner  of  a  man  who,  having  sailed  with  purple  banners 
the  sunset  sea  of  tragedy,  goes  bravely  on  with  a  life  gray 
and  weary. 

The  town  was  excited.  Gertie  Cowles  was  giving  a 
party,  and  she  had  withdrawn  her  invitation  to  Eddie 
Klemm.  Gertie  was  staying  away  from  high  school, 
gracefully  recovering  from  a  cold.  For  two  weeks  the 
junior  and  senior  classes  had  been  furtively  exhibiting  her 
holly-decked  cards  of  invitation.  Eddie  had  been  in- 
cluded, but  after  his  quarrel  with  Howard  Griffin,  a  Plato 
College  freshman  who  was  spending  the  vacation  with 
Ray  Cowles,  it  had  been  explained  to  Eddie  that  per- 
haps he  would  be  more  comfortable  not  to  come  to  the 
party. 

Gertie's  brother,  Murray,  or  "Ray,"  was  the  town 
hero.  He  had  captained  the  high-school  football  team. 
Hk  was  tall  and  very  black-haired,  and  he  "jollied"  the 
girls.  It  was  said  that  twenty  girls  in  Joralemon  and 
Wakamin,  and  a  "grass  widow"  in  St.  Hilary,  wrote  to 
him.  He  was  now  a  freshman  in  Plato  College,  Plato/ 
Minnesota.  He  had  brought  home  with  him  his  class- 
mate, Howard  Griffin,  whose  people  lived  in  South  Dakota 
and  were  said  to  be  wealthy.  Griffin  had  been  very 
haughty  to  Eddie  Klemm,  when  introduced  to  that  brisk 
young  man  at  the  billiard-parlor,  and  now,  the  town 
eagerly  learned,  Eddie  had  been  rejected  of  society. 

In  the  laboratory  Carl  was  growling:  "Well,  say,  Fatty, 
if  it  was  right  for  them  to  throw  Eddie  out,  where  do  I 
come  in?  His  dad  }s  a  barber,  and  mine  's  a  carpenter, 
and  that's  just  as  bad.  Or  how  about  you?  I  was  read- 
ing that  docs  used  to  be  just  barbers." 

"Aw,  thunder!"  said  Ben  Rusk,  the  doctor's  scion,  un- 
comfortably, "you're  just  arguing.  I  don't  believe  that 

33 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

about  doctors  being  !);irl)crs.  Don't  it  tell  about  doctors 
'way  hack  in  the  Bible?  Why,  of  course!  Luke  was  .1 
physician!  'Sides,  it  ain't  a  question  of  Kddie's  being  a 
barber's  son.  1  sh'd  think  you'd  reali/e  tli.it  (Jenie  isn't 
well.  She  wouldn't  want  to  have  to  entertain  l>otli 
Eddie  and  (JrilHn,  and  (irifh'n  's  her  guest;  and  be- 
sides  " 

"You're  getting  all  tangled  up.  If  I  was  to  let  you  go 
on  you'd  trip  over  a  long  word  and  bust  your  dome. 
Come  on.  We've  done  enough  cleaning.  Le's  hike. 
Come  on  up  to  the  house  and  help  me  on  my  bobs.  I  got 
a  new  scheme  for  pivoting  the  back  sled.  .  .  .  Yon  just 
wait  till  to-night.  I'm  going  to  tell  Gertie  and  Mi  sin 
Howard  Griffin  just  what  I  think  of  them  for  being  such 
two-bit  snobs.  And  your  future  ma-in-law.  (Jee!  I'm 
glad  I  don't  have  to  be  in  love  with  anybody,  and  become 
a  snob!  Come  on." 

Out  of  this  wholesome,  democratic,  and  stuffy  village 
life  Carl  suddenly  stepped  into  the  great  world.  A  motor- 
car, the  first  he  had  ever  seen,  was  drawn  up  before  the 
Hennepin  House. 

He  stopped.  His  china-blue  eyes  widened.  1 1  is  shoul- 
ders shot  forward  to  a  rigid  stoop  of  astonishment.  His 
mouth  opened.  1  le  gasped  as  they  ran  to  join  the  gath- 
ering crowd. 

"A  horseless  carriage!  Do  you  get  that?  There's  one 
here!"  He  touched  the  bonnet  of  the  two-cylinder  1901 
car,  and  worshiped.  "Under  there — the  engine!  And 
there's  where  you  steer.  ...  I  will  own  one!  .  .  .  (lee! 
you're  right,  Fatty;  I  believe  I  will  go  to  college.  And 
then  I'll  study  mechanical  engineering." 

"Thought  you  said  you  were  going  to  try  and  go  to 
Annapolis  and  be  a  sailor." 

"No.  Rats!  I'm  going  to  own  a  horseless  carriage, 
and  I'm  going  to  tour  every  state  in  the  Union.  .  .  .  Think 
of  seeing  mountains!  And  the  ocean!  And  going  twenty 
miles  an  hour,  like  a  train  1" 


CHAPTER  IV 

WHILE  Carl  prepared  for  Gertie  Cowles's  party  by 
pressing  his  trousers  with  his  mother's  flat-iron,while 
he  blacked  his  shoes  and  took  his  weekly  sponge-bath, 
he  was  perturbed  by  partisanship  with  Eddie  Klemm,  and 
a  longing  for  the  world  of  motors,  and  some  anxiety  as  to 
how  he  could  dance  at  the  party  when  he  could  not  dance. 

He  clumped  up  the  new  stone  steps  of  the  Cowles  house 
carelessly,  not  unusually  shy,  ready  to  tell  Gertie  what 
he  thought  of  her  treatment  of  Eddie.  Then  the  front 
door  opened  and  an  agonized  Carl  was  smothered  in  polite- 
ness. His  second  cousin,  Lena,  the  Cowleses*  "hired  girl," 
was  opening  the  door,  stiff  and  uncomfortable  in  a  cap, 
a  black  dress,  and  a  small  frilly  apron  that  dangled  on 
her  boniness  like  a  lace  kerchief  pinned  on  a  broom-handle. 
Murray  Cowles  rushed  up.  He  was  in  evening  clothes! 

Behind  Murray,  Mrs.  Cowles  greeted  Carl  with  thawed 
majesty:  "We  are  so  glad  to  have  you,  Carl.  Won't 
you  take  your  things  off  in  the  room  at  the  head  of  the 
stairs?" 

An  affable  introduction  to  Howard  Griffin  (also  in 
evening  clothes)  was  poured  on  Carl  like  soothing  balm. 
Said  Griffin:  "Mighty  glad  to  meet  you,  Ericson.  Ray 
told  me  you'd  make  a  ripping  sprinter.  The  captain  of 
the  track  team  '11  be  on  the  lookout  for  you  when  you 
get  to  Plato.  Course  you're  going  to  go  there.  The 
U.  of  Minn,  is  too  big.  .  .  .  You'll  do  something  for  old 
Plato.  Wish  I  could.  But  all  I  can  do  is  warble  like  a 
darn'  dicky-bird.  Have  a  cigarette?  .  .  .  They're  just 
starting  to  dance.  Come  on,  old  man.  Come  on,  Ray." 

35 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THJE    HAWK 

Carl  was  drawn  down-stairs  and  instantly  precipitated 
into  a  dance  regarding  which  he  was  sure  only  that  it  was 
either  a  waltz,  a  two-step,  or  something  else.  It  filled 
with  glamour  the  Cowles  library — the  only  parlor  in 
Joralemon  that  was  called  a  library,  and  the  only  one 
with  a  fireplace  or  a  polished  hardwood  floor.  Grandeur 
was  in  the  red  lambrequins  over  the  doors  and  windows; 
the  bead  portiere;  a  hand-painted  coal-scuttle;  small, 
round  paintings  of  flowers  set  in  black  velvet;  an  enor- 
mous black-walnut  bookcase  with  fully  a  hundred  vol- 
umes; and  the  two  lamps  of  green-mottled  shades  and 
wrought-iron  frames,  set  on  pyrographed  leather  skins 
brought  from  New  York  by  Gertie.  The  light  was  courtly 
on  the  polished  floor.  Adelaide  Benner — a  new  Adelaide, 
in  chiffon  over  yellow  satin,  and  patent-leather  slippers — 
grinned  at  him  and  ruthlessly  towed  him  into  the  tide 
of  dancers.  In  the  spell  of  society  no  one  seemed  to  re- 
member Eddie^  Klemm.  Adelaide  did  not  mention  the 
incident. 

Carl  found  himself  bumping  into  others,  continually 
apologizing  to  Adelaide  and  the  rest — and  not  caring. 
For  he  saw  a  vision!  Each  time  he  turned  toward  the 
south  end  of  the  room  he  beheld  Gertie  Cowles  glorified. 

She  was  out  of  ankle-length  dresses!  She  looked  her 
impressive  eighteen,  in  a  foaming  long  white  mull  that 
showed  her  soft  throat.  A  red  rose  was  in  her  brown 
hair.  She  reclined  in  a  big  chair  of  leather  and  oak  and 
smiled  her  gentlest,  especially  when  Carl  bobbed  his 
head  to  her. 

He  had  always  taken  her  as  a  matter  of  course;  she 
had  no  age,  no  sex,  no  wonder.  That  afternoon  she  had 
been  a  negligible  bit  of  Joralemon,  to  be  accused  of  snob- 
bery toward  Eddie  Klemm,  and  always  to  be  watched 
suspiciously  lest  she  "spring  some  New  York  airs  on 
us."  .  .  .  Gertie  had  craftily  seemed  unchanged  after  her 
New  York  enlightenment  till  now — here  she  was,  sud- 
denly grown-up  and  beautiful,  haloed  with  a  peculiar 

36 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

magic,  which  distinguished  her  from  all  the  rest  of  the 
world. 

"She's  the  one  that  would  ride  in  that  horseless  car- 
riage when  I  got  it!"  Carl  exulted.  "That  must  be  a 
train,  that  thing  she's  got  on." 

After  the  dance  he  disposed  of  Adelaide  Benner  as 
though  she  were  only  a  sister.  He  hung  over  the  back 
of  Gertie's  chair  and  urged:  "I  was  awful  sorry  to  hear 
you  were  sick.  .  .  .  Say,  you  look  wonderful,  to-night." 

"I'm  so  glad  you  could  come  to  my  party.     Oh,  I  must 

speak  to  you   about Do  you  suppose  you  would 

ever  get  very,  very  angry  at  poor  me?     Me  so  bad  some- 
times." 

He  cut  an  awkward  little  caper  to  show  his  aplomb, 
and  assured  her,  "I  guess  probably  I'll  kill  you  some  time, 
all  right." 

"No,  listen,  Carl;  I'm  dreadfully  serious.  I  hope  you 
didn't  go  and  get  dreadfully  angry  at  me  about  Eddie 
Klemm.  I  know  Eddie  's  good  friends  with  you.  And  I 
did  want  to  have  him  come  to  my  party.  But  you  see 
it  was  this  way:  Mr.  Griffin  is  our  guest  (he  likes  you  a 
lot,  Carl.  Isn't  he  a  dandy  fellow?  I  guess  Adelaide  and 
Hazel  're  just  crazy  about  him.  I  think  he's  just  as  swell 
as  the  men  in  New  York).  Eddie  and  he  didn't  get  along 
very  well  together.  It  isn't  anybody's  fault,  I  don't  guess. 
I  thought  Eddie  would  be  lots  happier  if  he  didn't  come, 
don't  you  see?" 

"Oh  no,  of  course;    oh  yes,  I  see.     Sure.     I  can  see 

how Say,  Gertie,  I  never  did  know  you  could  look 

so  grown-up.     I  suppose  now  you'll  never  play  with  me." 

"I  want  you  to  be  a  good  friend  of  mine  always.  We 
always  have  been  awfully  good  friends,  haven't  we?" 

"Yes.     Do  you  remember  how  we  ran  away?" 

"And  how  the  Black  Dutchman  chassssed  us!"  Her 
sweet  and  complacent  voice  was  so  cheerful  that  he  lost 
his  awe  of  her  new  magic  and  chortled: 

"And  how  we  used  to  play  pum-pum-pull-away." 

37 


THE   TRAIL   OF  THE   HAWK 

She  delicately  leaned  her  cheek  on  a  finger-tip  and 
sighed:  "Yes,  I  wonder  if  we  shall  ever  be  so  happy  as 
when  we  were  young.  ...  I  don't  believe  you  care  to  play 
with  me  so  much  now." 

"Oh,  gee!  Gertie!  Like  to !"  The  shyness  was  on 

him  again.  "Say,  are  you  feeling  better  now?  You're 
all  over  being  sick?" 

"Almost,  now.     I'll  be  back  in  school  right  after  vaca- 


tion." 


"It's  you  that  don't  want  to  play,  I  guess.  ...  I  can't 
get  over  that  long  white  dress.  It  makes  you  look  so — 
oh,  you  know,  so,  uh " 

"They're  going  to  dance  again.  I  wish  I  felt  able  to 
dance." 

"Let  me  sit  and  talk  to  you,  Gertie,  instead  of  dancing." 

"I  suppose  you're  dreadfully  bored,  though,  when  you 
could  be  down  at  the  billiard-parlor?" 

"Yes,  I  could!  Not!  Eddie  Klemm  and  his  fancy 
vest  wouldn't  have  much  chance,  alongside  of  Griffin  in 
his  dress-suit!  Course  I  don't  want  to  knock  Eddie. 
Him  and  me  are  pretty  good  side-kicks — 

"Oh  no;  I  understand.  It's  just  that  people  have  to 
go  with  their  own  class,  don't  you  think?" 

"Oh  yes.  Sure.  I  do  think  so,  myself."  Carl  said 
it  with  a  spurious  society  manner.  In  Gertie's  aristo- 
cratic presence  he  desired  to  keep  aloof  from  all  vulgar 
persons. 

"Of  course,  I  think  we  ought  to  make  allowances  for 
Eddie's  father,  Carl,  but  then ; 

She  sighed  with  the  responsibilities  of  noblesse  oblige; 
and  Carl  gravely  sighed  with  her. 

He  brought  a  stool  and  sat  at  her  feet.  Immediately 
he  was  afraid  that  every  one  was  watching  him.  Ray 
Cowles  bawled  to  them,  as  he  passed  in  the  waltz,  "Watch 
out  for  that  Carl,  Gert.  He's  a  regular  badix." 

Carl's  scalp  tickled,  but  he  tried  to  be  very  offhand  in 
remarking:  "You  must  have  gotten  that  dress  in  New 

38 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

York,  didn't  you?  Why  haven't  you  ever  told  me  about 
New  York?  You've  hardly  told  me  anything  at  all." 

"Well,  I  like  that!  And  you  never  been  near  me  to 
give  me  a  chance!" 

"I  guess  I  was  kind  of  scared  you  wouldn't  care  much 
for  Joralemon,  after  New  York." 

"Why,  Carl,  you  mustn't  say  that  to  me!" 

"I  didn't  mean  to  hurt  your  feelings,  Gertie,  honestly 
I  didn't.  I  was  just  joking.  I  didn't  think  you'd  take 
me  seriously." 

"As  though  I  could  forget  my  old  friends,  even  in  New 
York!" 

"I  didn't  think  that.  Straight.  Please  tell  me  about 
New  York.  That's  the  place,  all  right.  Jiminy !  wouldn't 
I  like  to  go  there!" 

"I  wish  you  could  have  been  there,  Carl.  We  had  such 
fun  in  my  school.  There  weren't  any  boys  in  it,  but 
we " 

"No  boys  in  it?    Why,  how's  that?" 

"Why,  it  was  just  for  girls." 

"I  see,"  he  said,  fatuously,  completely  satisfied. 

"We  did  have  the  best  times,  Carl.  I  must  tell  you 
about  one  awfully  naughty  thing  Carrie — she  was  my 
chum  in  school — and  I  did.  There  was  a  stock  company 
on  Twenty-third  Street,  and  we  were  all  crazy  about  the 
actors,  especially  Clements  Devereaux,  and  one  after- 
noon Carrie  told  the  principal  she  had  a  headache,  and  I 
asked  if  I  could  go  home  with  her  and  read  her  the  assign- 
ments for  next  day  (they  called  the  lessons  *  assignments' 
there),  and  they  thought  I  was  such  a  meek  little  country 
mouse  that  I  wouldn't  ever  fib,  and  so  they  let  us  go,  and 
what  do  you  think  we  did?  She  had  tickets  for  'The 
Two  Orphans'  at  the  stock  company.  (You've  never 
seen  'The  Two  Orphans,'  have  you?  It's  perfectly  splen- 
did. I  used  to  weep  my  eyes  out  over  it.)  And  after- 
ward we  went  and  waited  outside,  right  near  the  stage 
entrance,  and  what  do  you  think?  The  leading  man, 

39 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Clements  Devereaux,  went  right  by  us  as  near  as  I  am 
to  you.  Oh,  Carl,  I  wish  you  could  have  seen  him! 
Maybe  he  wasn't  the  handsomest  thing!  He  had  the 
blackest,  curliest  hair,  and  he  wore  a  thumb  ring." 

"I  don't  think  much  of  all  these  hamfatters,"  growled 
Carl.  "Actors  always  go  broke  and  have  to  walk  back 
to  Chicago.  Don't  you  think  it  'd  be  better  to  be  a  civil 
engineer  or  something  like  that,  instead  of  having  to  slick 
up  your  hair  and  carry  a  cane?  They're  just  dudes." 

"Why!  of  course,  Carl,  you  silly  boy!  You  don't  sup- 
pose I'd  take  Clements  seriously,  do  you?  You  silly 
boy!" 

"I'm  not  a  boy." 

"I  don't  mean  it  that  way."  She  sat  up,  touched  his 
shoulder,  and  sank  back.  He  blushed  with  bliss,  and  the 
fear  that  some  one  had  seen,  as  she  continued:  "I  always 
think  of  you  as  just  as  old  as  I  am.  We  always  will  be, 
won't  we?" 

"Yes!" 

"Now  you  must  go  and  talk  to  Doris  Carson.  Poor 
thing,  she  always  is  a  wall-flower." 

However  much  he  thought  of  common  things  as  he 
left  her,  beyond  those  common  things  was  the  miracle 
that  Gertie  had  grown  into  the  one  perfect,  divinely  or- 
dained woman,  and  that  he  would  talk  to  her  again.  He 
danced  the  Virginia  reel.  Instead  of  clumping  sulkily 
through  the  steps,  as  at  other  parties,  he  heeded  Adelaide 
Benner's  lessons,  and  watched  Gertie  in  the  hope  that 
she  would  see  how  well  he  was  dancing.  He  shouted  a 
demand  that  they  play  "Skip  to  Maloo,"  and  cried  down 
the  shy  girls  who  giggled  that  they  were  too  old  for  the 
childish  party-game.  He  howled,  without  prejudice  in 
favor  of  any  particular  key,  the  ancient  words: 

"Rats  in  the  sugar-bowl,  two  by  two, 

Bats  in  the  belfry,  two  by  two, 

Rats  in  the  sugar-bowl,  two  by  two, 

Skip  to  Maloo,  my  darling." 

40 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

In  the  nonchalant  company  of  the  smarter  young, 
bachelors  up-stairs  he  smoked  a  cigarette.  But  he 
sneaked  away.  He  paused  at  the  bend  in  the  stairs. 
Below  him  was  Gertie,  silver-gowned,  wonderful.  He 
wanted  to  go  down  to  her.  He  would  have  given  up  his 
chance  for  a  motor-car  to  be  able  to  swagger  down  like 
an  Eddie  Klemm.  For  the  Carl  Ericson  who  sailed  his 
ice-boat  over  inch-thick  ice  was  timid  now.  He  poked 
into  the  library,  and  in  a  nausea  of  discomfort  he  con- 
versed with  Mrs.  Cowles,  Mrs.  Cowles  doing  the  con- 
versing. 

"Are  you  going  to  be  a  Republican  or  a  Democrat, 
Carl?"  asked  the  forbidding  lady. 

"Yessum,"  mumbled  Carl,  peering  over  at  Gertie's 
throne,  where  Ben  Rusk  was  being  cultured. 
,  "I  hope  you  are  having  a  good  time.  We  always  wish 
our  young  friends  to  have  an  especially  good  time  at 
Gertrude's  parties,"  Mrs.  Cowles  sniffed,  and  bowed 
away. 

Carl  sat  beside  Adelaide  Benner  in  the  decorous  and 
giggling  circle  that  ringed  the  room,  waiting  for  the 
"refreshments."  He  was  healthily  interested  in  devour- 
ing maple  ice-cream  and  chocolate  layer-cake.  But  all 
the  while  he  was  spying  on  the  group  gathering  about 
Gertie — Ben  Rusk,  Howard  Griffin,  and  Joe  Jordan.  He 
took  the  most  strategic  precautions  lest  some  one  think 
that  he  wanted  to  look  at  Gertie;  made  such  ponderous 
efforts  to  prove  he  was  care-free  that  every  one  knew 
something  was  the  matter. 

Ben  Rusk  was  taking  no  part  in  the  gaiety  of  Howard 
and  Joe.  The  serious  man  of  letters  was  not  easily  led 
into  paths  of  frivolity.  Carl  swore  to  himself:  "Ben's 
the  only  guy  I  know  that's  got  any  delicate  feelings.  He 
appreciates  how  Gertie  feels  when  she's  sick,  poor  girl. 
He  don't  make  a  goat  of  himself,  like  Joe.  .  .  .  Or  maybe 
he's  got  a  stomach-ache." 

"Post-office!"   cried   Howard   Griffin  to  the   room   at 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

large.  "Come  on!  We're  all  of  us  going  to  be  kids 
again,  and  play  post-office.  Who's  the  first  girl  wants 
to  be  kissed?"' 

"The  idea!"  giggled  Adelaide  Benner. 

"Me  for  Adelaide!"  bawled  Joe  Jordan. 

"Oh,.Jo-oe,  bet  I  kiss  Gertie!"  from  Irving  Lamb. 

"The  idea!" 

"Just  as  if  we  were  children " 

"He  must  think  we're  kids  again " 

"Shamey!  Winnie  wants  to  be  kissed,  and  Carl 
won't " 

"I  don't,  either,  so  there " 

"I  think  it's  awful." 

"Bet  I  kiss  Gertie " 

Carl  was  furious  at  all  of  them  as  they  strained  their 
shoulders  forward  from  their  chairs  and  laughed.  He 
asked  himself,  "Haven't  these  galoots  got  any  sense?" 

To  speak  so  lightly  of  kissing  Gertie!  He  stared  at  the 
smooth  rounding  of  her  left  cheek  below  the  cheek-bone 
till  it  took  a  separate  identity,  and  its  white  softness  filled 
the  room. 

Ten  minutes  afterward,  playing  "post-office,"  he  was 
facing  Gertie  in  the  semi-darkness  of  the  sitting-room, 
authorized  by  the  game  to  kiss  her;  shut  in  with  his 
divinity. 

She  took  his  hand.  Her  voice  was  crooning,  "Are  you 
going  to  kiss  me  terribly  hard  ?" 

He  tried  to  be  gracefully  mocking:  "Oh  yes!  Sure! 
I'm  going  to  eat  you  alive." 

She  was  waiting. 

He  wished  that  she  would  not  hold  his  hand.  Within 
he  groaned,  "Gee  whiz!  I  feel  foolish!"  He  croaked: 
"Do  you  feel  better,  now?  You'll  catch  more  cold  in 
here,  won't  you?  There's  kind  of  a  draught.  Lemme 
look  at  this  window." 

Crossing  to  the  obviously  tight  window,  he  ran  his 
finger  along  the  edge  of  the  sash  with  infinite  care.  He 

42 


THE  TRAIL  OF  THE   HAWK 

trembled.  In  a  second,  now,  he  had  to  turn  and  make 
light  of  the  lips  which  he  would  fain  have  approached  with 
ceremony  pompous  and  lingering. 

Gertie  flopped  into  a  chair,  laughing:  "I  believe  you're 
afraid  to  kiss  me!  'Fraid  cat!  You'll  never  be  a  squire 
of  dames,  like  those  actors  are!  All  right  for  you!" 

"I  am  not  afraid!"  he  piped.  .  .  .  Even  his  prized  semi- 
bass  voice  had  deserted  him.  .  .  .  He  rushed  to  the  back 
of  her  chair  and  leaned  over,  confused,  determined. 
Hastily  he  kissed  her.  The  kiss  landed  on  the  tip  of  her 
cold  nose. 

And  the  whole  party  was  tumbling  in,  crying: 

"Time's  up!    You  can't  hug  her  all  evening!" 

"Did  you  see?     He  kissed  her  on  the  nose!" 

"Did  he?    Ohhhhh!" 

"Time  's  up.     Can't  try  it  again." 

Joe  Jordan,  in  the  van,  was  dancing  fantastically, 
scraping  his  forefinger  at  Carl,  in  token  of  disgrace. 

The  riotous  crowd,  Gertie  and  Carl  among  them, 
flooded  out  again.  To  show  that  he  had  not  minded  the 
incident  of  the  misplaced  kiss,  Carl  had  to  be  very  loud 
and  merry  in  the  library  for  a  few  minutes;  but  when 
the  game  of  "post-office"  was  over  and  Mrs.  Cowles 
asked  Ray  to  turn  down  the  lamp  in  the  sitting-room, 
Carl  insisted: 

"I'll  do  it,  Mrs.  Cowles;  I'm  nearer  'n  Ray,"  and 
bolted. 

He  knew  that  he  was  wicked  in  not  staying  in  the 
library  and  continuing  his  duties  to  the  party.  He  had 
to  crowd  into  a  minute  all  his  agonizing  and  be  back  at 
once. 

It  was  beautiful  in  the  stilly  sitting-room,  away  from 
the  noisy  crowd,  to  hear  love's  heart  beating.  He  darted 
to  the  chair  where  Gertie  had  sat  and  guiltily  kissed  its 
arm.  He  tiptoed  to  the  table,  blew  out  the  lamp,  re- 
membered that  he  should  only  have  turned  down  the 
wick,  tried  to  raise  the  chimney,  burnt  his  fingers, 
4  43 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

snatched  his  handkerchief,  dropped  it,  groaned,  picked 
up  the  handkerchief,  raised  the  chimney,  put  it  on  the 
table,  searched  his  pockets  for  a  match,  found  it,  dropped 
it,  picked  it  up  from  the  floor,  dropped  his  knife  from  his 
pocket  as  he  stooped,  felt  itchy  about  the  scalp,  picked 
up  the  knife,  relighted  the  lamp,  exquisitely  adjusted  the 
chimney — and  again  blew  out  the  flame.  And  swore. 

As  darkness  whirled  into  the  room  again  the  vision  of 
Gertie  came  nearer.  Then  he  understood  his  illness,  and 
gasped:  "Great  jumping  Jupiter  on  a  high  mountain! 
I  guess — I'm — in — love!  Mel" 

The  party  was  breaking  up.  Each  boy,  as  he  accom- 
panied a  girl  from  the  yellow  lamplight  into  the  below- 
zero  cold,  shouted  and  scuffled  the  snow,  to  indicate  that 
there  was  nothing  serious  in  his  attentions,  and  im- 
mediately tried  to  manoeuver  his  girl  away  from  the 
others.  Mrs.  Cowles  was  standing  in  the  hall — not 
hurrying  the  guests  away,  you  understand,  but  perfectly 
resigned  to  accepting  any  farewells — when  Gertie,  moving 
gently  among  them  with  little  sounds  of  pleasure,  penned 
Carl  in  a  corner  and  demanded: 

"Are  you  going  to  see  some  one  home?  I  suppose 
you'll  forget  poor  me  completely,  now!" 

"I  will  not!" 

"I  wanted  to  tell  you  what  Ray  and  Mr.  GrifEn  said 
about  Plato  and  about  being  lawyers.  Isn't  it  nice  you'll 
know  them  when  you  go  to  Plato?" 

"Yes,  it  '11  be  great." 

"Mr.  Griffin  's  going  to  be  a  lawyer  and  maybe  Ray  will, 
too,  and  why  don't  you  think  about  being  one?  You 
can  get  to  be  a  judge  and  know  all  the  best  people.  It 
would  be  lovely Refining  influences — they — that's — 

"I  couldn't  ever  be  a  high-class  lawyer  like  Griffin  will," 
said  Carl,  his  head  on  one  side,  much  pleased. 

"You  silly  boy,  of  course  you  could.  I  think  you've 
got  just  as  much  brains  as  he  has,  and  Ray  says  they  all 
look  up  to  him  even  in  Plato.  And  I  don't  see  why  Plato 

44 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

isn't  just  as  good — of  course  it  isn't  as  large,  but  it's  so 
select  and  the  faculty  can  give  you  so  much  more  in- 
dividual attention,  and  I  don't  see  why  it  isn't  every  bit 
as  good  as  Yale  and  Michigan  and  all  those  Eastern 
colleges.  .  .  .  Howard — Mr.  Griffin — he  says  that  he 
wouldn't  ever  have  thought  of  being  a  lawyer  only  a  girl 
was  such  a  good  influence  with  him,  and  if  you  get  to  be 
a  famous  man,  too,  maybe  I'll  have  been  just  a  teeny- 
weeny  bit  of  an  influence,  too,  won't  I  ?" 

"Oh  yes!" 

"I  must  get  back  now  and  say  good-by  to  my  guests. 
Good  night,  Carl." 

"I  am  going  to  study — you  just  watch  me;  and  if  I 

do  get  to  go  to  Plato Oh,  gee!  you  always  have  been 

a  good  influence "  He  noticed  that  Doris  Carson  was 

watching  them.  "Well,  I  gotta  be  going.  I've  had  a 
peach  of  a  time.  Good  night." 

Doris  Carson  was  expectantly  waiting  for  one  of  the 
boys  to  "see  her  home,"  but  Carl  guiltily  stole  up  to  Ben 
Rusk  and  commanded: 

"Le's  hike,  Fatty.  Le's  take  a  walk.  Something  big 
to  tell  you." 


CHAPTER  V 

CARL  kicked  up  the  snow  in  moon-shot  veils.  The 
lake  boomed.  For  all  their  woolen  mittens,  ribbed 
red-cotton  wristlets,  and  plush  caps  with  ear-laps,  the 
cold  seared  them.  Carl  encouraged  Ben  to  discourse  of 
Gertie  and  the  delights  of  a  long  and  hopeless  love.  He 
discovered  that,  actually,  Ben  had  suddenly  fallen  in 
love  with  Adelaide  Benner.  "Gee!"  he  exulted.  "May- 
be that  gives  me  a  chance  with  Gertie,  then.  But  I 
won't  let  her  know  Ben  ain't  in  love  with  her  any  more. 
Jiminy!  ain't  it  lucky  Gertie  liked  me  just  when  Ben  fell 
in  love  with  somebody  else!  Funny  the  way  things  go; 
and  her  never  knowing  about  Ben."  He  laid  down  his 
cards.  While  they  plowed  through  the  hard  snow-drifts, 
swinging  their  arms  against  their  chests  like  milkmen, 
he  blurted  out  all  his  secret:  that  Gertie  was  the  "slickest 
girl  in  town";  that  no  one  appreciated  her. 
"Ho,  ho!"  jeered  Ben. 

"I  thought  you  were  crazy  about  her,  and  then  you 
start  kidding  about  her!  A  swell  bunch  of  chivalry  you 

got,  you  and  your  Galahad!    You " 

"Don't  you  go  jumping  on  Galahad,  or  I'll  fight!" 
"He  was  all  right,  but  you  ain't,"  said  Carl.     "You 
hadn't  ought  to  ever  sneer  at  love." 

"Why,  you  said,  just  this  afternoon " 

"You  poor  yahoo,  I  was  only  teasing  you.  No;  about 
Gertie.  It's  like  this:  she  was  telling  me  a  lot  about 
how  Griffin  's  going  to  be  a  lawyer,  about  how  much 
they  make  in  cities,  and  I've  about  decided  I'll  be  a 
lawyer." 

46 


THE  TRAIL  OF  THE   HAWK 

"Thought  you  were  going  to  be  a  mechanical  en- 
gineer?" 

"Well,  can't  a  fellow  change  his  mind?  When  you're 
an  engineer  you're  always  running  around  the  country, 
and  you  never  get  shaved  or  anything,  and  there  ain't 
any  refining  influences " 

The  absorbing  game  of  "what  we're  going  to  be"  made 
them  forget  snow  and  cold-squeezed  fingers.  Ben,  it  was 
decided,  was  to  own  a  newspaper  and  support  C.  Ericson, 
Attorney-at-Law,  in  his  dramatic  run  for  state  senator. 

Carl  did  not  mention  Gertie  again.  But  it  all  meant 
Gertie. 

Carl  made  his  round  trimming  the  arc-lights  next  day, 
apparently  a  rudely  healthy  young  person,  but  really  a 
dreamer  love-lorn  and  misunderstood.  He  had  found 
a  good  excuse  for  calling  on  Gertie,  at  noon,  and  had  been 
informed  that  Miss  Gertrude  was  taking  a  nap.  He 
determined  to  go  up  the  lake  for  rabbits.  He  doubted 
if  he  would  ever  return,  and  wondered  if  he  would  be 
missed.  Who  would  care  if  he  froze  to  death?  He 
wouldn't!  (Though  he  did  seem  to  be  taking  certain 
precautions,  by  donning  a  mackinaw  coat,  two  pairs  of 
trousers,  two  pairs  of  woolen  socks,  and  shoe-packs.) 

He  was  graceful  as  an  Indian  when  he  swept,  on  skees 
he  had  made  himself,  across  miles  of  snow  covering  the 
lake  and  dazzling  in  the  diffused  light  of  an  even  gray 
sky.  The  reeds  by  the  marshy  shore  were  frost-glittering 
and  clattered  faintly.  Marshy  islands  were  lost  in  snow. 
Hummocks  and  ice-jams  and  the  weaving  patterns  of 
mink  tracks  were  blended  in  one  white  immensity,  on 
which  Carl  was  like  a  fly  on  a  plaster  ceiling.  The  world 
was  deserted.  But  Carl  was  not  lonely.  He  forgot  all 
about  Gertie  as  he  cached  his  skees  by  the  shore  and 
prowled  through  the  woods,  leaping  on  brush-piles  and 
shooting  quickly  when  a  rabbit  ran  out. 

When  he  had  bagged  three  rabbits  he  was  besieged  by 

47 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

the  melancholy  of  loneliness,  the  perfection  of  the  silver- 
gowned  Gertie.  He  wanted  to  talk.  He  thought  of 
Bone  Stillman. 

It  was  very  likely  that  Bone  was,  as  usual  in  winter, 
up  beyond  Big  Bend,  fishing  for  pickerel  with  tip-ups. 
A  never-stopping  dot  in  the  dusk,  Carl  headed  for  Big 
Bend,  three  miles  away. 

The  tip-up  fisher  watches  a  dozen  tip-ups — short, 
automatic  fishing-rods,  with  lines  running  through  the 
ice,  the  pivoted  arm  signaling  the  presence  of  a  fish  at 
the  bait.  Sometimes,  for  warmth,  he  has  a  tiny  shanty, 
perhaps  five  feet  by  six  in  ground  area,  heated  by  a  powder- 
can  stove.  Bone  Stillman  often  spent  the  night  in  his 
movable  shanty  on  the  lake,  which  added  to  his  reputation 
as  village  eccentric.  But  he  was  more  popular,  now,  with 
the  local  sporting  gentlemen,  who  found  that  he  played 
a  divine  game  of  poker. 

"Hello,  son!"  he  greeted  Carl.  "Come  in.  Leave 
them  long  legs  of  yours  up  on  shore  if  there  ain't  room." 

"Say,  Bone,  do  you  think  a  fellow  ever  ought  to  join 
a  church?" 

"Depends.     Why?" 

"Well,  suppose  he  was  going  to  be  a  lawyer  and  go  in 
for  politics?" 

"Look  here.  What  're  you  thinking  of  becoming  a 
lawyer  for?" 

"Didn't  say  I  was." 

"Of  course  you're  thinking  of  it.  Look  here.  Don't 
you  know  you've  got  a  chance  of  seeing  the  world? 
You're  one  of  the  lucky  people  that  can  have  a  touch  of 
the  wanderlust  without  being  made  useless  by  it — as  I 
have.  You  may,  you  may  wander  in  thought  as  well  as 
on  freight-trains,  and  discover  something  for  the  world. 

Whereas  a  lawyer They're  priests.  They  decide 

what's  holy  and  punish  you  if  you  don't  guess  right. 
They  set  up  codes  that  k  takes  lawyers  to  interpret,  and 
so  they  perpetuate  themselves.  I  don't  mean  to  say 


,     THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

you're  extraordinary  in  having  a  chance  to  wander. 
Don't  get  the  big-head  over  it.  You're  a  pretty  average 
young  American.  There's  plenty  of  the  same  kind.  Only, 
mostly  they  get  tied  up  to  something  before  they  see  what 
a  big  world  there  is  to  hike  in,  and  I  want  to  keep  you 

from  that.  I'm  not  roasting  lawyers Yes,  I  am,  too. 

They  live  in  calf-bound  books.  Son,  son,  for  God's  sake 
live  in  life." 

"Yes,  but  look  here,  Bone;  I  was  just  thinking  about  it, 
that's  all.  You're  always  drumming  it  into  me  about 
not  taking  anything  for  granted.  Anyway,  by  the  time 
I  go  to  Plato  I'll  know " 

"D'you  mean  to  say  you're  going  to  that  back-creek 
nunnery?  That  Blackhaw  University?  Are  you  going 
to  play  checkers  all  through  life?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,  now,  Bone.  Plato  ain't  so  bad. 
A  fellow  's  got  to  go  some  place  so  he  can  mix  with  people 
that  know  what's  the  proper  thing  to  do.  Refining  in- 
fluences and  like  that." 

"Proper!  Refining!  Son,  son,  are  you  going  to  get 
Joralemonized  ?  If  you  want  what  the  French  folks  call 
the  grand  manner,  if  you're  going  to  be  a  tip-top,  A  Num- 
ber I,  genuwine  grand  senyor,  or  however  they  pronounce 
it,  why,  all  right,  go  to  it;  that's  one  way  of  playing  a 
big  game.  But  when  it  comes  down  to  a  short-bit,  fresh- 
water sewing-circle  like  Plato  College,  where  an  imitation 
scholar  teaches  you  imitation  translations  of  useless 
classics,  and  amble-footed  girls  teach  you  imitation  party 
manners  that  'd  make  you  just  as  plumb  ridic'lous  in  a 

real  salon  as  they  would  in  a  lumber-camp,  why Oh, 

sa-a-a-y!  I've  got  it.  Girls,  eh?  What  girl  've  you 
been  falling  in  love  with  to  get  this  Plato  idea  from,  eh  ?" 

"Aw,  I  ain't  in  love,  Bone." 

"No,  I  don't  opine  you  are.  At  your  age  you  got  about 
as  much  chance  of  being  in  love  as  you  have  of  being  a 
grandfather.  But  somehow  I  seem  to  have  a  little  old 
suspicion  that  you  think  you're  in  love.  But  it's  none 

49 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

of  my  business,  and  I  ain't  going  to  ask  questions  about 
it."  He  patted  Carl  on  the  shoulder,  moving  his  arm  with 
difficulty  in  their  small,  dark  space.  "Son,  I've  learned 
this  in  my  life — and  I've  done  quite  some  hiking  at  that, 
even  if  I  didn't  have  the  book-1'arnin'  and  the  git-up-and- 
git  to  make  anything  out  of  my  experience.  It's  a  thing 
I  ain't  big  enough  to  follow  up,  but  I  know  it's  there. 
Life  is  just  a  little  old  checker  game  played  by  the  alfalfa 
contingent  at  the  country  store  unless  you've  got  an 
ambition  that's  too  big  to  ever  quite  lasso  it.  You  want 
to  know  that  there's  something  ahead  that's  bigger  and 
more  beautiful  than  anything  you've  ever  seen,  and  never 
stop  till — well,  till  you  can't  follow  the  road  any  more. 
And  anything  or  anybody  that  doesn't  pack  any  surprises 
— get  that? — surprises  for  you,  is  dead,  and  you  want  to 
slough  it  like  a  snake  does  its  skin.  You  want  to  keep  on 
remembering  that  Chicago 's  beyond  Joralemon,  and  Paris 
beyond  Chicago,  and  beyond  Paris — well,  maybe  there's 
some  big  peak  of  the  Himalayas." 

For  hours  they  talked,  Bone  desperately  striving  to 
make  his  dreams  articulate  to  Carl — and  to  himself. 
They  ate  fish  fried  on  the  powder-can  stove,  with  half- 
warm  coffee.  They  walked  a  few  steps  outside  the  shack 
in  the  ringing  cold,  to  stretch  stiff  legs.  Carl  saw  a  world 
of  unuttered  freedom  and  beauty  forthshadowed  in  Bone's 
cloudy  speech.  But  he  was  melancholy.  For  he  was 
going  to  give  up  his  citizenship  in  wonderland  for  Gertie 
Cowles. 

Gertie  continued  to  enjoy  ill  health  for  another  week. 
Every  evening  Carl  walked  past  her  house,  hoping  that 
he  might  see  her  at  a  window,  longing  to  dare  to  call. 
Each  night  he  pictured  rescuing  her  from  things — rescu- 
ing her  from  fire,  from  drowning,  from  evil  men.  He 
felt  himself  the  more  bound  to  her  by  the  social  recogni- 
tion of  having  his  name  in  the  Joralemon  Dynamite,  the 
following  Thursday; 

5° 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

One  of  the  pleasantest  affairs  of  the  holiday  season  among  the 
younger  set  was  held  last  Friday  evening,  when  Gertrude  Cowles 
entertained  a  number  of  her  young  friends  at  a  party  at  her 
mother's  handsome  residence  on  Maple  Hill.  Among  those 
present  were  Mesdames  Benner  and  Rusk,  who  came  in  for  a 
brief  time  to  assist  in  the  jollities  of  the  evening,  Misses  Benner, 
Carson,  Wesselius,  Madlund,  Ripka,  Smith,  Lansing,  and  Brick; 
and  Messrs.  Ray  Cowles,  his  classmate  Howard  Griffin,  who  is 
spending  his  vacation  here  from  Plato  College,  Carl  Ericson, 
Joseph  Jordan,  Irving  Lamb,  Benjamin  Rusk,  Nels  Thorsten, 
Peter  Schoenhof,  and  William  T.  Upham.  After  dancing  and 
games,  which  were  thoroughly  enjoyed  by  all  present,  and  a 
social  hour  spent  in  discussing  the  events  of  the  season  in  J.  H. 
S.,  a  most  delicious  repast  was  served  and  the  party  adjourned, 
one  and  all  voting  that  they  had  been  royally  entertained. 

The  glory  was  the  greater  because  at  least  seven  names 
had  been  omitted  from  the  list  of  guests.  Such  social 
recognition  satisfied  Carl — for  half  an  hour.  Possibly  it 
nerved  him  finally  to  call  on  Gertie. 

Since  for  a  week  he  had  been  dreading  a  chilly  recep- 
tion when  he  should  call,  he  was  immeasurably  surprised 
when  he  did  call  and  got  what  he  expected.  He  had  not 
expected  the  fates  to  be  so  treacherous  as  to  treat  him 
as  he  expected,  after  he  had  disarmed  them  by  expect- 
ing it. 

When  he  rang  the  bell  he  was  an  immensely  grown-up 
lawyer  (though  he  couldn't  get  his  worn,  navy-blue  tie 
to  hang  exactly  right).  He  turned  into  a  crestfallen  youth 
as  Mrs.  Cowles  opened  the  door  and  waited — waited! — 
for  him  to  speak,  after  a  crisp : 

"Well?    What  is  it,  Carl?" 

"Why,  uh,  I  just  thought  Fd  come  and  see  how  Gertie 
is." 

"Gertrude  is  much  better,  thank  you.  I  presume  she 
will  return  to  school  at  the  end  of  vacation." 

The  hall  behind  Mrs.  Cowles  seemed  very  stately,  very 
long, 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"I've  heard  a  lot  saying  they  hoped  she  was  better." 

"You  may  tell  them  that  she  is  better." 

Mrs.  Cowles  shivered.  No  one  could  possibly  have 
looked  more  like  a  person  closing  a  door  without  actually 
closing  one.  "Lena !"  she  shrieked,  "close  the  kitchen  door. 
There's  a  draught."  She  turned  back  to  Carl. 

The  shy  lover  vanished.  An  angry  young  man  chal- 
lenged, "If  Gertie  's  up  I  think  I'll  come  in  a  few  minutes 
and  see  her." 

"Why,  uh "  hesitated  Mrs.  Cowles. 

He  merely  walked  in  past  her.  His  anger  kept  its  own 
council,  for  he  could  depend  upon  Gertie's  warm  greet- 
ing— lonely  Gertie,  he  would  bring  her  the  cheer  of  the 
great  open. 

The  piano  sounded  in  the  library,  and  the  voice  of  the 
one  perfect  girl  mingled  with  a  man's  tenor  in  "Old  Black 
Joe."  Carl  stalked  into  the  library.  Gertie  was  there, 
much  corseted,  well  powdered,  wearing  a  blue  foulard 
frenziedly  dotted  with  white,  and  being  cultured  in  com- 
pany with  Dr.  Doyle,  the  lively  young  dentist  who  had 
recently  taken  an  office  in  the  National  Bank  Block.  He 
was  a  graduate  of  the  University  of  Minnesota — dental 
department.  He  had  oily  black  hair,  and  smiled  with 
gold-filled  teeth  before  one  came  to  the  real  point  of  a 
joke.  He  sang  in  the  Congregational  church  choir,  and 
played  tennis  in  a  crimson-and-black  blazer — the  only 
one  in  Joralemon. 

To  Carl  Dr.  Doyle  was  dismayingly  mature  and  smart. 
He  horribly  feared  him  as  a  rival.  For  the  second  time 
that  evening  he  did  not  balk  fate  by  fearing  it.  The 
dentist  was  a  rival.  After  fluttering  about  the  mature 
charms  of  Miss  Dietz,  the  school  drawing-teacher,  and 
taking  a  tentative  buggy-ride  or  two  with  the  miller's 
daughter,  Dr.  Doyle  was  bringing  all  the  charm  of  his 
professional  position  and  professional  teeth  and  patent- 
leather  shoes  to  bear  upon  Gertie. 

And  Gertie  was  interested.  Obviously.  She  was  all 

52 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

of  eighteen  to-night.  She  frowned  slightly  as  she  turned 
on  the  piano-stool  at  Carl's  entrance,  and  mechanically: 
"This  is  a  pleasant  surprise/'  Then,  enthusiastically: 
"Isn't  it  too  bad  that  Dr.  Doyle  was  out  of  town,  or  I 
would  have  invited  him  to  my  party,  and  he  would  have 
given  us  some  of  his  lovely  songs.  .  .  .  Do  try  the  second 
verse,  doctor.  The  harmony  is  so  lovely." 

Carl  sat  at  the  other  end  of  the  library  from  Gertie 
and  the  piano,  while  Mrs.  Cowles  entertained  him. 
He  obediently  said  "Yessum"  and  "No,  'm"  to  the 
observations  which  she  offered  from  the  fullness  of 
her  lack  of  experience  of  life.  He  sat  straight  and 
still.  Behind  his  fixed  smile  he  was  simultaneously 
longing  to  break  into  the  musical  fiesta,  and  envying 
the  dentist's  ability  to  get  married  without  having  to 
wait  to  grow  up,  and  trying  to  follow  what  Mrs.  Cowles 
was  saying. 

She  droned,  while  crocheting  with  high-minded  in- 
dustry a  useless  piano-scarf,  "Do  you  still  go  hunting, 
Carl?" 

"Yessum.  Quite  a  little  rabbit-hunting.  Oh,  not 
very  much." 

(At  the  distant  piano,  across  the  shining  acres  of  floor, 
the  mystical  woman  and  a  dentist  had  ceased  singing, 
and  were  examining  a  fresh  sheet  of  music.  The  dentist 
coyly  poked  his  finger  at  her  coiffure,  and  she  slapped  the 
finger,  gurgling.) 

"I  hope  you  don't  neglect  your  school  work,  though, 
Carl."  Mrs.  Cowles  held  the  scarf  nearer  the  lamp  and 
squinted  at  it,  deliberately  and  solemnly,  through  the  eye- 
glasses that  lorded  it  atop  her  severe  nose.  A  headachy 
scent  of  moth-balls  was  in  the  dull  air.  She  forbiddingly 
moved  the  shade  of  the  lamp  about  a  tenth  of  an  inch. 
She  removed  some  non-existent  dust  from  the  wrought- 
iron  standard.  Her  gestures  said  that  the  lamp  was  de- 
cidedly more  chic  than  the  pink-shaded  hanging  lamps, 
raised  and  lowered  on  squeaking  chains,  which  character- 

53 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

ized  most  Joralemon  living-rooms.  She  glanced  at  the 
red  lambrequin  over  the  nearest  window.  The  moth-ball 
smell  grew  more  stupifying. 

Carl  felt  stuffy  in  the  top  of  his  nose  as  he  mumbled, 
"Oh,  I  work  pretty  hard  at  chemistry,  but,  gee!  I  can't  see 
much  to  all  this  Latin." 

"When  you're  a  little  older,  Carl,  you'll  learn  that  the 
things  you  like  now  aren't  necessarily  the  things  that  are 
good  for  you.  I  used  to  say  to  Gertrude — of  course  she 
is  older  than  you,  but  she  hasn't  been  a  young  lady  for 
so  very  long,  even  yet — and  I  used  to  say  to  her,  'Ger- 
trude, you  will  do  exactly  what  I  tell  you  to,  and  not  what 
you  want  to  do,  and  we  shall  make — no — more — words — 
about  it!'  And  I  think  she  sees  now  that  her  mother  was 
right  about  some  things!  Dr.  Doyle  said  to  me,  and  of 
course  you  know,  Carl,  that  he's  a  very  fine  scholar — our 
pastor  told  me  that  the  doctor  reads  French  better  than 
he  does,  and  the  doctor  's  told  me  some  things  about 
modern  French  authors  that  I  didn't  know,  and  I  used  to 
read  French  almost  as  well  as  English,  when  I  was  a  girl, 
my  teachers  all  told  me — and  he  says  that  he  thinks  that 
Gertrude  has  a  very  fine  mind,  and  he  was  so  glad  that 
she  hasn't  been  taken  in  by  all  this  wicked,  hysterical 
way  girls  have  to-day  of  thinking  they  know  more  than 
their  mothers." 

"Yes,  she  is — Gertie  is I  think  she's  got  a  very 

fine  mind,"  Carl  commented. 

(From  the  other  end  of  the  room  Gertie  could  be  over- 
heard confiding  to  the  dentist  in  tones  of  hushed  and  de- 
licious adult  scandal,  "They  say  that  when  she  was  in 
St.  Paul  she ") 

"So,"  Mrs.  Cowles  serenely  sniffed  on,  while  the 
bridge  of  Carl's  nose  felt  broader  and  broader,  stretching 
wider  and  wider,  as  that  stuffy  feeling  increased  and  the 
intensive  heat  stung  his  eyelids,  "you  see  you  mustn't  think 
because  you'd  rather  play  around  with  the  boys  than 
study  Latin,  Carl,  that  it's  the  fault  of  your  Latin-teacher." 

54 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

She  nodded  at  him  with  a  condescending  smile  that  was 
infinitely  insulting. 

He  knew  it  and  resented  it,  but  he  did  not  resent  it 
actively,  for  he  was  busy  marveling,  "How  the  dickens 
is  it  I  never  heard  Doc  Doyle  was  stuck  on  Gertie? 
Everybody  thought  he  was  going  with  Bertha.  Dang 
him,  anyway!  The  way  he  snickers,  you'd  think  she  was 
his  best  girl." 

Mrs.  Cowles  was  loftily  pursuing  her  pillared  way: 
"Latin  was  known  to  be  the  best  study  for  developing  the 
mind  a  long,  long  time "  And  her  clicking  crochet- 
needles  impishly  echoed,  "A  long,  long  time,"  and  the 
odor  of  moth-balls  got  down  into  Carl's  throat,  while 
in  the  golden  Olympian  atmosphere  at  the  other  end  of 
the  room  Gertie  coyly  pretended  to  slap  the  dentist's 
hand  with  a  series  of  tittering  taps.  "A  long,  long  time 
before  either  you  or  I  were  born,  Carl,  and  we  can't  very 
well  set  ourselves  up  to  be  wiser  than  the  wisest  men  that 
ever  lived,  now  can  we?"  Again  the  patronizing  smile. 
"That  would  scarcely " 

Carl  resolved:  "This  's  got  to  stop.  I  got  to  do  some- 
thing." He  felt  her  monologue  as  a  blank  steel  wall 
which  he  could  not  pierce.  Aloud:  "Yes,  that's  so,  I 
guess.  Say,  that's  a  fine  dress  Gertie  Js  got  on  to-night, 
ain't  it.  ...  Say,  I  been  learning  to  play  crokinole  at  Ben 
Rusk's.  You  got  a  board,  haven't  you?  Would  you  like 
to  play?  Does  the  doctor  play?" 

"Indeed,  I  haven't  the  slightest  idea,  but  I  have  very 
little  doubt  that  he  does — he  plays  tennis  so  beautifully. 
He  is  going  to  teach  Gertrude,  in  the  spring."  She 
stopped,  and  again  held  the  scarf  up  to  the  light.  "I  am 
so  glad  that  my  girly,  that  was  so  naughty  once  and  ran 
away  with  you — I  don't  think  I  shall  ever  get  over  the 
awful  fright  I  had  that  night! — I  am  so  glad  that,  now 
she  is  growing  up,  clever  people  like  Dr.  Doyle  appreciate 
her  so  much,  so  very  much." 

She  dropped  her  crochet  to  her  lap  and  stared  squarely 

55 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

at  Carl.  Her  warning  that  he  would  do  exceedingly  well 
to  go  home  was  more  than  plain.  He  stared  back,  agi- 
tated but  not  surrendering.  Deliberately,  almost  suavely, 
with  ten  years  of  experience  added  to  the  sixteen  years 
that  he  had  brought  into  the  room,  he  said: 

"I'll  see  if  they'd  like  to  play."  He  sauntered  to  the 
other  end  of  the  room,  abashed  before  the  mystic  woman, 
and  ventured:  "I  saw  Ray,  to-day.  ...  I  got  to  be  going, 
pretty  quick,  but  I  was  wondering  if  you  two  felt  like 
playing  some  crokinole?" 

Gertie  said,  slowly:  "I'd  like  to,  Carl,  but Unless 

you'd  like  to  play,  doctor?" 

"Why  of  course  it's  comme  il  faut  to  play,  Miss  Cowles, 
but  I  was  just  hoping  to  have  the  pleasure  of  hearing  you 
make  some  more  of  your  delectable  music,"  bowed  the 
dentist,  and  Gertie  bowed  back;  and  their  smiles  joined 
in  a  glittery  bridge  of  social  aplomb. 

"Oh  yes,"  from  Carl,  "that — yes,  do But  you 

hadn't  ought  to  play  too  much  if  you  haven't  been 
well." 

"Oh,  Carl!"  shrieked  Gertie.  "'Ought  not  to/  not 
'hadn't  ought  to'!" 

'"Ought  not  to/"  repeated  Mrs.  Cowles,  icily,  while 
the  dentist  waved  his  hand  in  an  amused  manner  and 
contributed: 

"Ought  not  to  say  'hadn't  ought  to/  as  my  preceptor 
used  to  tell  me.  ...  I'd  like  to  hear  you  sing  Longfellow's 
'Psalm  of  Life/  Miss  Cowles." 

"Don't  you  think  Longfellow's  a  bum  pote?"  growled 
Carl.  "  Bone  Stillman  says  Longfellow 's  the  grind-organ 
of  poetry.  Like  this:  'Life  is  re-al,  life  is  ear-nest,  turn 
te  diddle  dydle  dum!'" 

"Carl,"  ordered  Mrs.  Cowles,  "you  will  please  to  never 
mention  that  Stillman  person  in  my  house!" 

"Oh,  Carl!"  rebuked  Gertie.  She  rose  from  the  piano- 
stool.  Her  essence  of  virginal  femininity,  its  pure  and 
cloistered  and  white-camisoled  odor,  bespelled  Carl  to 

56 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

fainting  timidity.  And  while  he  was  thus  defenseless 
the  dentist  thrust: 

"Why,  they  tell  me  Stillman  doesn't  even  believe  the 
Bible!" 

Carl  was  not  to  retrieve  his  credit  with  Gertie,  but  he 
couldn't  betray  Bone  Stillman.  Hastily:  "Yes,  maybe, 

that  way Oh,  say,  doctor,  Pete  Jordan  was  telling 

me"  (liar!)  "that  you  were  one  of  the  best  tennis-players 
at  the  U." 

Gertie  sat  down  again. 

The  dentist  coyly  fluffed  his  hair  and  deprecated,  "Oh 
no,  I  wouldn't  say  that!" 

Carl  had  won.  Instantly  they  three  became  a  country 
club  of  urban  aristocrats,  who  laughed  at  the  poor  rustics 
of  Joralemon  for  knowing  nothing  of  golf  and  polo.  Carl 
was  winning  their  tolerance — though  not  their  close  at- 
tention— by  relating  certain  interesting  facts  from  the 
inside  pages  of  the  local  paper  as  to  how  far  the  tennis- 
rackets  sold  in  one  year  would  extend,  if  laid  end  to  end, 
when  he  saw  Gertie  and  her  mother  glance  at  the  hall. 
Gertie  giggled.  Mrs.  Cowles  frowned.  He  followed  their 
glance. 

Clumping  through  the  hall  was  his  second  cousin,  Lena, 
the  Cowleses'  "hired  girl."  Lena  nodded  and  said,  "Hallo, 
Carl!" 

Gertie  and  the  dentist  raised  their  eyebrows  at  each 
other. 

Carl  talked  for  two  minutes  about  something,  he  did 
not  know  what,  and  took  his  leave.  In  the  intensity  of 
his  effort  to  be  resentfully  dignified  he  stumbled  over 
the  hall  hat-rack.  He  heard  Gertie  yelp  with  laughter. 

"I  got  to  go  to  college — be  worthy  of  her!"  he  groaned, 
all  the  way  home.  "And  I  can't  afford  to  go  to  the  U. 
of  M.  I'd  like  to  be  free,  like  Bone  says,  but  I've  got  to 
go  to  Plato." 


CHAPTER  VI 

DLATO  COLLEGE,  Minnesota,  is  as  earnest  and 
1  undistinguished,  as  provincially  dull  and  pathetically 
human,  as  a  spinster  missionary.  Its  two  hundred  or  two 
hundred  and  fifty  students  come  from  the  furrows,  asking 
for  spiritual  bread,  and  are  given  a  Greek  root.  Red- 
brick buildings,  designed  by  the  architect  of  county  jails, 
are  grouped  about  that  high,  bare,  cupola-crowned  gray- 
stone  barracks,  the  Academic  Building,  like  red  and 
faded  blossoms  about  a  tombstone.  In  the  air  is  the 
scent  of  crab-apples  and  meadowy  prairies,  for  a  time, 
but  soon  settles  down  a  winter  bitter  as  the  learning  of 
the  Rev.  S.  Alcott  Wood,  D.D.,  the  president.  The 
town  and  college  of  Plato  disturb  the  expanse  of  prairie 
scarce  more  than  a  group  of  haystacks.  In  winter  the 
walks  blur  into  the  general  whiteness,  and  the  trees  shrink 
to  chilly  skeletons,  and  the  college  is  like  five  blocks  set 
on  a  frozen  bed-sheet — no  shelter  for  the  warm  and  timid 
soul,  yet  no  windy  peak  for  the  bold.  The  snow  wipes 
out  all  the  summer-time  individuality  of  place,  and  the 
halls  are  lonelier  at  dusk  than  the  prairie  itself — far  lonelier 
than  the  yellow-lighted  jerry-built  shops  in  the  town. 
The  students  never  lose,  for  good  or  bad,  their  touch  with 
the  fields.  From  droning  class-rooms  the  victims  of  edu- 
cation see  the  rippling  wheat  in  summer;  and  in  winter 
the  impenetrable  wall  of  sky.  Footsteps  and  quick 
laughter  of  men  and  girls,  furtively  flirting  along  the 
brick  walls  under  the  beautiful  maples,  do  make  Plato 
dear  to  remember.  They  do  not  make  it  brilliant.  They 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

do  not  explain  the  advantages  of  leaving  the  farm  for 
another  farm. 

To  the  freshman,  Carl  Ericson,  descending  from  the 
dusty  smoking-car  of  the  M.  &  D.,  in  company  with 
tumultuous  youths  in  pin-head  caps  and  enormous  sweat- 
ers, the  town  of  Plato  was  metropolitan.  As  he  walked 
humbly  up  Main  Street  and  beheld  two  four-story  build- 
ings and  a  marble  bank  and  an  interurban  trolley-car,  he 
had,  at  last,  an  idea  of  what  Minneapolis  and  Chicago 
must  be.  Two  men  in  sweaters  adorned  with  a  large  "  P," 
athletes,  generals,  heroes,  walked  the  streets  in  the  flesh, 
and  he  saw — it  really  was  there,  for  him! — the  "College 
Book  Store,"  whose  windows  were  filled  with  leather- 
backed  treatises  on  Greek,  logic,  and  trigonometry;  and, 
finally,  he  was  gaping  through  a  sandstone  gateway  at 
four  buildings,  each  of  them  nearly  as  big  as  the  Jorale- 
mon  High  School,  surrounding  a  vast  stone  castle. 

He  entered  the  campus.  He  passed  an  old  man  with 
white  side-whiskers  and  a  cord  on  his  gold-rimmed  eye- 
glasses; an  aged  old  man  who  might  easily  be  a  professor. 
A  blithe  student  with  "  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Receptn.  Com."  large 
on  his  hat-band,  rushed  up  to  Carl,  shook  his  hand  busily, 
and  inquired: 

"Freshman,  old  man?  Got  your  room  yet?  There's 
a  list  of  rooming-houses  over  at  the  Y.  M.  Come  on,  I'll 
show  you  the  way." 

He  was  received  in  Academe,  in  Arcadia,  in  Elysium; 
in  fact,  in  Plato  College. 

He  was  directed  to  a  large  but  decomposing  house 
conducted  by  the  widow  of  a  college  janitor,  and  advised 
to  take  a  room  at  $1.75  a  week  for  his  share  of  the  rent. 
That  implied  taking  with  the  room  a  large,  solemn  room- 
mate, fresh  from  teaching  country  school,  a  heavy,  slow- 
spoken,  serious  man  of  thirty-one,  named  Albert  Smith, 
registered  as  A.  Smith,  and  usually  known  as  "Plain 
Smith."  Plain  Smith  sat  studying  in  his  cotton  socks, 
and  never  emptied  the  wash-basin.  He  remarked,  during 
5  59 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

the  first  hour  of  their  discourse  in  the  groves  of  Academe: 
"I  hope  you  ain't  going  to  bother  me  by  singing  and  sky- 
larking around.  I'm  here  to  work,  bub."  Smith  then  re- 
turned to  the  large  books  which  he  was  diligently  scanning 
that  he  might  find  wisdom,  while  Carl  sniffed  at  the 
brown-blotched  wall-paper,  the  faded  grass  matting,  the 
shallow,  standing  wardrobe.  ...  He  liked  the  house,  how- 
ever. It  had  a  real  bath-room!  He  could,  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life,  splash  in  a  tub.  Perhaps  it  would  not  be 
regarded  as  modern  to-day;  perhaps  effete  souls  would 
disdain  its  honest  tin  tub,  smeared  with  a  paint  that 
peeled  instantly;  but  it  was  elegance  and  the  Hesperides 
compared  with  the  sponge  and  two  lard-pails  of  hot 
water  from  the  Ericson  kitchen  reservoir,  which  had  for 
years  been  his  conception  of  luxurious  means  of  bathing. 

Also,  there  were  choicer  spirits  in  the  house.  One  man, 
who  pressed  clothes  for  a  living  and  carried  a  large  line 
of  cigarettes  in  his  room,  was  second  vice-president  of 
the  sophomore  class.  As  smoking  was  dourly  forbidden 
to  all  Platonians,  the  sophomore's  room  was  a  refuge. 
The  sophomore  encouraged  Carl  in  his  natural  talent  for 
cheerful  noises,  while  Plain  Smith  objected  even  to  sing- 
ing while  one  dressed. 

Like  four  of  his  classmates,  Carl  became  a  waiter  at 
Mrs.  Henkel's  student  boarding-house,  for  his  board  and 
two  dollars  a  week.  The  two  dollars  constituted  his  pin- 
money — a  really  considerable  sum  for  Plato,  where  the 
young  men  were  pure  and  smoked  not,  neither  did  they 
drink;  where  evening  clothes  were  snobbish  and  sweaters 
thought  rather  well  of;  where  the  only  theatrical  attrac- 
tions were  week-stand  melodramas  playing  such  attrac- 
tions as  "Poor  but  True,"  or  the  Rev.  Sam  J.  Pitkins's 
celebrated  lecture  on  "The  Father  of  Lies,"  annually 
delivered  at  the  I.  O.  O.  F.  Hall. 

Carl's  father  assured  him  in  every  letter  that  he  was 
extravagant.  He  ran  through  the  two  dollars  in  practi- 
cally no  time  at  all.  He  was  a  member  in  good  and  regu- 

60 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

lar  standing  of  the  informal  club  that  hung  about  the 
Corner  Drug  Store,  to  drink  coffee  soda  and  discuss 
athletics  and  stare  at  the  passing  girls.  He  loved  to  set 
off  his  clear  skin  and  shining  pale  hair  with  linen  collars, 
though  soft  roll-collar  shirts  were  in  vogue.  And  he  was 
ready,  for  any  wild  expedition,  though  it  should  cost 
fifty  or  sixty  cents.  With  the  sophomore  second  vice- 
president  and  John  Terry  of  the  freshman  class  (usually 
known  as  "the  Turk")  he  often  tramped  to  the  large 
neighboring  town  of  Jamaica  Mills  to  play  pool,  smoke 
Turkish  cigarettes,  and  drink  beer.  They  always  cho- 
rused Plato  songs,  in  long-drawn  close  harmony.  Once 
they  had  imported  English  ale,  out  of  bottles,  and  carried 
the  bottles  back  to  decorate  and  distinguish  their  rooms. 

Carl's  work  at  the  boarding-house  introduced  him  to 
pretty  girl  students,  and  cost  him  no  social  discredit 
whatever.  The  little  college  had  the  virtue  of  genuine 
democracy  so  completely  that  it  never  prided  itself  on 
being  democratic.  Mrs.  Henkel,  proprietor  of  the  board- 
ing-house, occasionally  grew  sarcastic  to  her  student 
waiters  as  she  stooped,  red-faced  and  loosened  of  hair, 
over  the  range;  she  did  suggest  that  they  "kindly  wash 
up  a  few  of  the  dishes  now  and  then  before  they  went 
gallivantin'  off."  But  songs  arose  from  the  freshmen  wash- 
ing and  wiping  dishes;  they  chucklingly  rehashed  jokes; 
they  discussed  the  value  of  the  "classical  course"  versus 
the  "scientific  course."  While  they  waited  on  table  they 
shared  the  laughter  and  arguments  that  ran  from  student 
to  student  through  Mrs.  Henkel's  dining-room — a  sunny 
room  bedecked  with  a  canary,  a  pussy-cat,  a  gilded  rope 
portiere,  a  comfortable  rocker  with  a  Plato  cushion,  a 
Garland  stove  with  nickel  ornaments,  two  geraniums,  and 
an  oak-framed  photograph  of  the  champion  Plato  foot- 
ball team  of  1899. 

Carl  was  readily  accepted  by  the  men  and  girls  who 
gathered  about  the  piano  in  the  evening.  His  graceful- 
seeming  body,  his  puppyish  awkwardness,  his  quietly 

61 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

belligerent  dignity,  his  eternal  quest  of  new  things,  won 
him  respect;  though  he  was  too  boyish  to  rouse  admira- 
tion, except  in  the  breast  of  fat,  pretty,  cheerful,  fuzzy- 
haired,  candy-eating  Mae  Thurston.  Mae  so  influenced 
Carl  that  he  learned  to  jest  casually;  and  he  practised 
a  new  dance,  called  the  "  Boston,"  which  Mae  had  brought 
from  Minneapolis,  though  as  a  rival  to  the  waltz  and  two- 
step  the  new  dance  was  ridiculed  by  every  one.  He 
mastered  all  the  s avoir  faire  of  the  boarding-house.  But 
he  was  always  hurrying  away  from  it  to  practise  football, 
to  prowl  about  the  Plato  power-house,  to  skim  through 
magazines  in  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  reading-room,  even  to 
study. 

Beyond  the  dish-washing  and  furnace-tending  set  he 
had  no  probable  social  future,  though  everybody  knew 
everybody  at  Plato.  Those  immaculate  upper-classmen, 
Murray  Cowles  and  Howard  Griffin,  never  invited  him 
to  their  room  (in  a  house  on  Elm  Street  with  a  screened 
porch  and  piano  sounds).  He  missed  Ben  Rusk,  who  had 
gone  to  Oberlin  College,  and  Joe  Jordan,  who  had  gone 
to  work  for  the  Joralemon  Specialty  Manufacturing 
Company. 

Life  at  Plato  was  suspicious,  prejudiced,  provincial,  as 
it  affected  the  ambitious  students;  and  for  the  weaker 
brethren  it  was  philandering  and  vague.  The  class 
work  was  largely  pure  rot — arbitrary  mathematics,  anti- 
quated botany,  hesitating  German,  and  a  veritable  mili- 
tary drill  in  the  conjunction  of  Greek  verbs  conducted  by 
a  man  with  a  non-com,  soul,  a  pompous,  sandy-whiskered 
manikin  with  cold  eyes  and  a  perpetual  cold  in  the  nose, 
who  had  inflicted  upon  a  patient  world  the  four-millionth 
commentary  on  Xenophon.  Few  of  the  students  realized 
the  futility  of  it  all;  certainly  not  Carl,  who  slept  well 
and  believed  in  football. 

The  life  habit  justifies  itself.  One  comes  to  take  any- 
thing as  a  matter  of  course;  to  take  one's  neighbors 
seriously,  whether  one  lives  in  Plato  or  Persia,  in  Mrs. 

62 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Henkel's  kitchen  or  a  fo'c's'le.  The  Platonians  raced 
toward  their  various  goals  of  high-school  teaching,  or  law, 
or  marriage,  or  permanently  escaping  their  parents;  they 
made  love,  and  were  lazy,  and  ate,  and  swore  off  bad 
habits,  and  had  religious  emotions,  all  quite  naturally; 
they  were  not  much  bored,  rarely  exhilarated,  always 
ready  to  gossip  about  their  acquaintances;  precisely  like 
a  duke  or  a  delicatessen-keeper.  They  played  out  their 
game.  But  it  was  so  tiny  a  game,  so  played  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  other  games,  that  it  tended  to  dwarf  its 
victims — and  the  restless  children,  such  as  Carl,  in- 
stinctively resent  this  dwarfing.  They  seek  to  associate 
themselves  with  other  rebels.  Carl's  unconscious  rebel 
band  was  the  group  of  rowdyish  freshmen  who  called  them- 
selves "the  Gang,"  and  loafed  about  the  room  of  their 
unofficial  captain,  John  Terry,  nicknamed  "the  Turk," 
a  swarthy,  large-featured  youth  with  a  loud  laugh,  a 
habit  of  slapping  people  upon  the  shoulder,  an  ingenious 
mind  for  deviltry,  and  considerable  promise  as  a  football 
end. 

Most  small  local  colleges,  and  many  good  ones,  have 
their  "gangs"  of  boys,  who  presumably  become  honorable 
men  and  fathers,  yet  who  in  college  days  regard  it  as 
heroic  to  sneak  out  and  break  things,  and  as  humorous 
to  lead  countryside  girls  astray  in  sordid  amours.  The 
more  cloistered  the  seat  of  learning,  the  more  vicious 
are  the  active  boys,  to  keep  up  with  the  swiftness  of 
life  forces.  The  Turk's  gang  painted  the  statues  of  the 
Memorial  Arch;  they  stole  signs;  they  were  the  creators 
of  noises  unexpected  and  intolerable,  during  small,  quiet 
hours  of  moonlight. 

As  the  silkworm  draws  its  exquisite  stuff  from  dowdy 
leaves,  so  youth  finds  beauty  and  mystery  in  stupid  days. 
Carl  went  out  unreservedly  to  practise  with  the  foot- 
ball squad;  he  had  a  joy  of  martyrdom  in  tackling  the 
dummy  and  peeling  his  nose  on  the  frozen  ground.  .  He 
knew  a  sacred  aspiration  when  Mr.  Bjorken,  the  coach,  a 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

former  University  of  Minnesota  star,  told  him  that  he 
might  actually  "make"  the  team  in  a  year  or  two;  that 
he  had  twice  as  much  chance  as  Ray  Cowles,  who — while 
Carl  was  thinking  only  of  helping  the  scrub  team  to  win — 
was  too  engrossed  in  his  own  dignity  as  a  high-school 
notable  to  get  into  the  scrimmage. 

At  the  games,  among  the  Gang  on  the  bleachers,  Carl 
went  mad  with  fervor.  He  kept  shooting  to  his  feet, 
and  believed  that  he  was  saving  his  country  every  time 
he  yelled  in  obedience  to  the  St.  Vitus  gestures  of  the 
cheer-leader,  or  sang  "On  the  Goal-line  of  Plato"  to  the 
tune  of  "On  the  Sidewalks  of  New  York."  Tears  of  a 
real  patriotism  came  when,  at  the  critical  moment  of  a 
losing  game  against  the  Minnesota  Military  Institute, 
with  sunset  forlorn  behind  bare  trees,  the  veteran  cheer- 
leader flung  the  hoarse  Plato  rooters  into  another  defiant 
yell.  It  was  the  never-say-die  of  men  who  rose,  with 
clenched  hands  and  arms  outstretched,  to  the  despairing 
need  of  their  college,  and  then — Lord!  They  hurled  up 
to  their  feet  in  frenzy  as  Pete  Madlund  got  away  with  the 
ball  for  a  long  run  and  victory.  .  .  .  The  next  week,  when 
the  University  of  Keokuk  whipped  them,  40  to  10, 
Carl  stood  weeping  and  cheering  the  defeated  Plato  team 
till  his  throat  burned. 

He  loved  the  laughter  of  the  Turk,  Mae  Thurston's 
welcome,  experiments  in  the  physics  laboratory.  And  he 
was  sure  that  he  was  progressing  toward  the  state  of 
grace  in  which  he  might  aspire  to  marry  Gertie  Cowles. 

He  did  not  think  of  her  every  day,  but  she  was  always 
somewhere  in  his  thoughts,  and  the  heroines  of  magazine 
stories  recalled  some  of  her  virtues  to  his  mind,  invariably. 
The  dentist  who  had  loved  her  had  moved  away.  She 
was  bored.  She  occasionally  wrote  to  Carl.  But  she  was 
still  superior — tried  to  "influence  him  for  good"  and  ad- 
vised him  to  "cultivate  nice  people." 

He  was  convinced  that  he  was  going  to  become  a 
lawyer,  for  her  sake,  but  he  knew  that  some  day  he  would 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

be  tempted  by  the  desire  to  become  a  civil  or  a  mechanical 
engineer. 

A  January  thaw.  Carl  was  tramping  miles  out  into 
the  hilly  country  north  of  Plato.  He  hadn't  been  able 
to  persuade  any  of  the  Gan'g  to  leave  their  smoky  loafing- 
place  in  the  Turk's  room,  but  his  own  lungs  demanded 
the  i  open.  With  his  heavy  boots  swashing  through  icy 
pools,  calling  to  an  imaginary  dog  and  victoriously  run- 
ning Olympic  races  before  millions  of  spectators,  he  defied 
the  chill  of  the  day  and  reached  Hiawatha  Mound,  a  hill 
eight  miles  north  of  Plato. 

Toward  the  top  a  man  was  to  be  seen  crouched  in  a 
pebbly,  sunny  arroyo,  peering  across  the  bleak  prairie, 
a  lone  watcher.  Ascending,  Carl  saw  that  it  was  Eugene 
,  Field  Linderbeck,  a  Plato  freshman.  That  amused  him. 
He  grinningly  planned  a  conversation.  Every  one  said 
that  "Genie  Linderbeck  was  queer."  A  precocious  boy 
of  fifteen,  yet  the  head  of  his  class  in  scholarship;  re- 
ported to  be  interested  in  Greek  books  quite  outside  of 
the  course,  fond  of  drinking  tea,  and  devoid  of  merit  in 
the  three  manly  arts — athletics,  flirting,  and  breaking 
rules  by  smoking.  Genie  was  small,  anemic,  and  too 
well  dressed.  He  stuttered  slightly  and  was  always  peer- 
ing doubtfully  at  you  with  large  and  childish  eyes  that 
were  made  more  eerie  by  his  pale,  bulbous  forehead  and 
the  penthouse  of  tangled  mouse-brown  hair  over  it.  ... 
The  Gang  often  stopped  him  on  the  campus  to  ask  mock- 
polite  questions  about  his  ambition,  which  was  to  be  a 
teacher  of  English  at  Harvard  or  Yale.  Not  very  con- 
sistently, but  without  ever  wearying  of  the  jest,  they 
shadowed  him  to  find  out  if  he  did  not  write  poetry;  and 
while  no  one  had  actually  caught  him,  he  was  still  suspect. 

Genie  said  nothing  when  Carl  called,  "H'lo,  son!"  and 
sat  on  a  neighboring  rock. 

"What's  trouble,  Genie?     You  look  worried." 

"Why  don't  any  of  you  fellows  like  me?" 

65 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Carl  felt  like  a  bug  inspected  by  a  German  professor. 
"W-why,  how  d'you  mean,  Genie?" 

"None  of  you  take  me  seriously.  ,You  simply  let  me 
hang  around.  And  you  think  I'm  a  grind.  I'm  not. 
I  like  to  read,  that's  all.  Perhaps  you  think  I  shouldn't 
like  to  go  out  for  athletics  if  I  could!  I  wish  I  could 
run  the  way  you  can,  Ericson.  Darn  it!  I  was  happy  out 
here  by  myself  on  the  Mound,  where  every  prospect 
pleases,  and — V  now  here  I  am  again,  envying  you." 

"Why,  son,  I — I  guess — I  guess  we  admire  you  a  whole 
lot  more  than  we  let  on  to.  Cheer  up,  old  man!  When 
you're  valedictorian  and  on  the  debating  team  and 
wallop  Hamlin  you'll  laugh  at  the  Gang,  and  we'll  be 
proud  to  write  home  we  know  you."  Carl  was  hating 
himself  for  ever  having  teased  Genie  Linderbeck.  "You've 
helped  me  a  thundering  lot  whenever  I've  asked  you  about 
that  blame  Greek  syntax.  I  guess  we're  jealous  of  you. 
You — uh — you  don't  want  to  let  'em  kid  you 

Carl  was  embarrassed  before  Genie's  steady,  youthful, 
trusting  gaze.  He  stooped  for  a  handful  of  pebbles,  with 
which  he  pelted  the  landscape,  maundering,  "Say,  why 
don't  you  come  around  to  the  Turk's  room  and  get  better 
acquainted  with  the  Gang?" 

"When  shall  I  come?" 

"When?  Oh,  why,  thunder! — you  know,  Genie — just 
drop  in  any  time." 

"I'll  be  glad  to." 

Carl  was  perspiring  at  the  thought  of  what  the  Gang 
would  do  to  him  when  they  discovered  that  he  had  invited 
Genie.  But  he  was  game.  "Come  up  to  my  room  when- 
ever you  can,  and  help  me  with  my  boning,"  he  added. 
"You  mustn't  ever  get  the  idea  that  we're  conferring 
any  blooming  favor  by  having  you  around.  It's  you  that 
help  us.  Our  necks  are  pretty  well  sandpapered,  I'm 
afraid.  .  .  .  Come  up  to  my  room  any  time.  .  .  .  I'll  have  to 
be  hiking  on  if  I'm  going  to  get  much  of  a  walk.  Come 
over  and  see  me  to-night." 

66 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"I  wish  you'd  come  up  to  Mr.  Frazer's  with  me  some 
Sunday  afternoon  for  tea,  Ericson." 

Henry  Frazer,  M.A.  (Yale),  associate  professor  of 
English  literature,  was  a  college  mystery.  He  was  a 
thin-haired  young  man,  with  a  consuming  love  of  his 
work,  which  was  the  saving  of  souls  by  teaching  Lycidas 
and  Comus.  This  was  his  first  year  out  of  graduate 
school,  his  first  year  at  Plato — and  possibly  his  last. 
It  was  whispered  about  that  he  believed  in  socialism,  and 
the  president,  the  Rev.  Dr.  S.  Alcott  Wood,  had  no 
patience  with  such  silly  fads. 

Carl  marveled,  "Do  you  go  to  Frazer's?" 

"Why,  yes!" 

"Thought  everybody  was  down  on  him.  They  say  he's 
an  anarchist,  and  I  know  he  gives  fierce  assignments  in 
English  lit.;  that's  what  all  the  fellows  in  his  classes  say." 

"All  the  fools  are  down  on  him.  That's  why  I  go  to 
his  house." 

"Don't  the  fellows— uh— kind  of ' 

"Yes,"  piped  Genie  in  his  most  childish  tone  of  anger, 
his  tendency  to  stammer  betraying  him,  "they  k-kid  me 
for  liking  Frazer.  He's — he's  the  only  t-teacher  here 
that  isn't  p-p-p " 

"Spit!" 

-provincial!" 

"What  d'you  mean  by  'provincial'?" 

"Narrow.  Villagey.  Do  you  know  what  Bernard 
Shaw  says ?" 

"Never  read  a  word  of  him,  my  son.  And  let  me  tell 
you  that  my  idea  of  no  kind  of  conversation  is  to  have  a 
guy  spring  'Have  you  read?'  on  me  every  few  seconds, 
and  me  coming  back  with:  'No,  I  haven't.  Ain't  it  inter- 
esting !'  If  that's  the  brand  of  converse  at  Prof  Frazer's 
you  can  count  me  out." 

Genie  laughed.  "Think  how  much  more  novelty  you 
get  out  of  roasting  me  like  that  than  telling  Terry  he's1 
got  'bats  in  his  belfry*  ten  or  twelve  times  a  day." 

67 


THE    TRAIL    OF    THE    HAWK 

"All  right,  my  son;  you  win.  Maybe  I'll  go  to  Fra- 
zer's  with  you.  Sometime." 

The  Sunday  following  Carl  went  to  tea  at  Professor 
Henry  Frazer's. 

The  house  was  Platonian  without,  plain  and  dumpy, 
with  gingerbread  Gothic  on  the  porch,  blistered  paint, 
and  the  general  lines  of  a  prairie  barn,  but  the  living- 
room  was  more  nearly  beautiful  than  any  room  Carl  had 
seen.  In  accordance  with  the  ideal  of  that  era  it  had 
Mission  furniture  with  large  leather  cushions,  brown  wood- 
work, and  tan  oatmeal  paper  scattered  with  German  color 
prints,  instead  of  the  patent  rockers  and  carbon  prints 
of  Roman  monuments  which  adorned  the  houses  of  the 
other  professors.  While  waiting  with  Genie  Linderbeck 
for  the  Frazers  to  come  down,  Carl  found  in  a  rack  on  the 
oak  table  such  books  as  he  had  never  seen:  exquisite 
books  from  England,  bound  in  terra-cotta  and  olive-green 
cloth  with  intricate  gold  designs,  heavy-looking,  but 
astonishingly  light  to  the  hand;  books  about  Celtic 
legends  and  Provencal  jongleurs,  and  Japanese  prints  and 
other  matters  of  which  he  had  never  heard;  so  different 
from  the  stained  text-books  and  the  shallow  novels  by 
brisk  ladies  which  had  constituted  his  experiences  of 
literature  that  he  suddenly  believed  in  culture. 

Professor  Frazer  appeared,  walking  into  the  room  after 
his  fragile  wife  and  gracious  sister-in-law,  and  Carl  drank 
tea  (with  lemon  instead  of  milk  in  it!)  and  listened  to 
bewildering  talk  and  to  a  few  stanzas,  heroic  or  haunt- 
ingly  musical,  by  a  new  poet,  W.  B.  Yeats,  an  Irishman 
associated  with  a  thing  called  the  Gaelic  Movement. 
Professor  Frazer  had  a  funny,  easy  friendliness;  his  sister- 
in-law,  a  Diana  in  brown,  respectfully  asked  Carl  about 
the  practicability  of  motor-cars,  and  all  of  them,  including 
two  newly  come  "high-brow"  seniors,  listened  with  nod- 
ding interest  while  Carl  bashfully  analyzed  each  of  the 
nine  cars  owned  in  Plato  and  Jamaica  Mills.  At  dusk  the 
Diana  in  brown  played  MacDowell,  and  the  light  of  the 

68 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

silken  -  shaded  lamp  was  on  a  print  of  a  fairy  Swiss 
village. 

That  evening  Carl  wrestled  with  the  Turk  for  one  hour, 
catch-as-catch-can,  on  the  Turk's  bed  and  under  it  and 
nearly  out  of  the  window,  to  prove  the  value  of  Professor 
Frazer  and  culture.  Next  morning  Carl  and  the  Turk 
enrolled  in  Frazer's  optional  course  in  modern  poetry, 
a  desultory  series  of  lectures  which  did  not  attempt 
Tennyson  and  Browning.  So  Carl  discovered  Shelley 
and  Keats  and  Walt  Whitman,  Swinburne  and  Rossetti 
and  Morris.  He  had  to  read  by  crawling  from  word  to 
word  as  though  they  were  ice-cakes  in  a  cataract  of 
emotion.  The  allusiveness  was  agonizing.  But  he  pulled 
off  his  shoes,  rested  his  feet  on  the  foot-board  of  his  bed, 
drummed  with  a  pair  of  scissors  on  his  knee,  and  persisted 
in  his  violent  pursuit  of  the  beautiful.  Meanwhile  his 
room-mate,  Plain  Smith,  flapped  the  pages  of  a  Latin 
lexicon  or  took  a  little  recreation  by  reading  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Todd's  Students'  Manual,  that  gem  of  the  alarm-clock 
and  water-bucket  epoch  in  American  colleges. 

Carl  never  understood  Genie  Linderbeck's  conviction 
that  words  are  living  things  that  dream  and  sing  and 
battle.  But  he  did  learn  that  there  was  speech  transcend- 
ing the  barking  of  the  Gang. 

In  the  spring  of  his  freshman  year  Carl  gave  up  waiting 
on  table  and  drove  a  motor-car  for  a  town  banker.  He 
learned  every  screw  and  spring  in  the  car.  He  also  made 
Genie  go  out  with  him  for  track  athletics.  Carl  won  his 
place  on  the  college  team  as  a  half-miler,  and  viciously 
assaulted  two  freshmen  and  a  junior  for  laughing  at 
Genie's  legs,  which  stuck  out  of  his  large  running-pants 
like  straws  out  of  a  lemonade-glass. 

In  the  great  meet  with  Hamlin  University,  though 
Plato  lost  most  of  the  events,  Carl  won  the  half-mile  race. 
He  was  elected  to  the  exclusive  fraternity  of  Ray  Cowles 
and  Howard  Griffin,  Omega.  Chi  Delta,  just  before  Com- 
mencement. That  excited  him  less  than  the  fact  that  the 

69 


THE   TRAIL  'OF   THE   HAWK 

Turk  and  he  were  to  spend  the  summer  up  north,  in  the 
hard-wheat  country,  stringing  wire  for  the  telephone  com- 
pany with  a  gang  of  Minneapolis  wiremen. 

Oh  yes.  And  he  would  see  Gertie  in  Joralemon.  .  .  . 
She  had  written  to  him  with  so  much  enthusiasm  when 
he  had  won  the  half-mile. 


CHAPTER  VII 

HE  saw  Gertie  two  hours  after  he  had  reached  Jorale- 
mon  for  a  week's  stay  before  going  north.  They  sat 
in  rockers  on  the  grass  beside  her  stoop.  They  were  em- 
barrassed, and  rocked  profusely  and  chattily.  Mrs. 
Cowles  was  surprised  and  not  much  pleased  to  find  him, 
but  Gertie  murmured  that  she  had  been  lonely,  and  Carl 
felt  that  he  must  be  nobly  patient  under  Mrs.  Cowles's 
slight.  He  got  so  far  as  to  sigh,  "O  Gertie!"  but  grew 
frightened,  as  though  he  were  binding  himself  for  life. 
He  wished  that  Gertie  were  not  wearing  so  many  combs 
stuck  all  over  her  pompadoured  hair.  He  noted  that  his 
rocker  creaked  at  the  joints,  and  thought  out  a  method  of 
strengthening  it  by  braces.  She  bubbled  that  he  was 
going  to  be  the  Big  Man  in  his  class.  He  said,  "Aw,  rats!" 
and  felt  that  his  collar  was  too  tight.  ...  He  went  home. 
His  father  remarked  that  Carl  was  late  for  supper,  that  he 
had  been  extravagant  in  Plato,  and  that  he  was  un- 
likely to  make  money  out  of  "all  this  runnin'  races." 
But  his  mother  stroked  his  hair  and  called  him  her  big 
boy.  ...  He  tramped  out  to  Bone  Stillman's  shack,  im- 
patient for  the  hand-clasp  of  the  pioneer,  and  grew  elo- 
quent, for  the  first  time  since  his  home-coming,  as  he 
described  Professor  Frazer  and  the  delights  of  poesy.  A 
busy  week  Carl  had  in  Joralemon.  Adelaide  Benner  gave 
a  porch-supper  for  him.  They  sat  under  the  trees, 
laughing,  while  in  the  dimly  lighted  street  bicycles  whirred, 
and  box-elders  he  had  always  known  whispered  that  this 
guest  of  honor  was  Carl  Ericson,  come  home  a  hero. 
The  cycling  craze  still  existed  in  Joralemon.  Carl 

71 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

rented  a  wheel  for  a  week  from  the  Blue  Front  Hardware 
Store.  Once  he  rode  with  a  party  of  boys  and  girls  to 
Tamarack  Lake.  Once  he  rode  to  Wakamin  with  Ben 
Rusk,  home  from  Oberlin  College.  The  ride  was  not 
entirely  enjoyable,  because  Oberlin  had  nearly  two 
thousand  students  and  Ben  was  amusedly  superior  about 
Plato.  They  did,  however,  enjoy  the  stylishness  of  buy- 
ing bottles  of  strawberry  pop  at  Wakamin. 

Twice  Carl  rode  to  Tamarack  Lake  with  Gertie.  They 
sat  on  the  shore,  and  while  he  shied  flat  skipping-stones 
across  the  water  and  flapped  his  old  cap  at  the  hovering 
horse-flies  he  babbled  of  the  Turk's  "stunts,"  and  the 
banker's  car,  and  the  misty  hinterlands  of  Professor 
Frazer's  lectures.  Gertie  appeared  interested,  and  smiled 
at  regular  intervals,  but  so  soon  as  Carl  fumbled  at  one 
of  Frazer's  abstract  theories  she  interrupted  him  with 
highly  concrete  Joralemon  gossip.  ...  He  suspected  that 
she  had  not  kept  up  with  the  times.  True,  she  referred  to 
New  York,  but  as  the  reference  was  one  she  had  been 
using  these  two  years  he  still  identified  her  with  Joralemon. 
.  .  .  He  did  not  even  hold  her  hand,  though  he  wondered 
if  it  might  not  be  possible;  her  hand  lay  so  listlessly  by 
her  skirt,  on  the  sand.  .  .  .  They  rode  back  in  twilight  of 
early  June.  Carl  was  cheerful  as  their  wheels  crunched 
the  dirt  roads  in  a  long,  crisp  hum.  The  stilly  rhythm  of 
frogs  drowned  the  clank  of  their  pedals,  and  the  sky  was 
vast  and  pale  and  wistful. 

Gertie,  however,  seemed  less  cheerful. 

On  the  last  evening  of  his  stay  in  Joralemon  Gertie 
gave  him  a  hay-ride  party.  They  sang  "Seeing  Nelly 
Home,"  and  "Merrily  We  Roll  Along,"  and  "Suwanee 
River,"  and  "My  Old  Kentucky  Home,"  and  "My 
Bonnie  Lies  Over  the  Ocean,"  and  "In  the  Good  Old 
Summertime,"  under  a  delicate  new  moon  in  a  sky  of 
apple-green.  Carl  pressed  Gertie's  hand;  she  returned 
the  pressure  so  quickly  that  he  was  embarrassed.  He 
withdrew  his  hand  as  quickly  as  possible,  ostensibly  to 

72 


THE    TRAIL   OF    THE    HAWK 

help  in  the  unpacking  of  the  basket  of  ginger-ale  and 
chicken  sandwiches  and  three  cakes  (white-frosted,  choco- 
late layer,  and  banana  cake). 

The  same  group  said  good-by  to  Carl  at  the  M.  &  D. 
station.  As  the  train  started,  Carl  saw  Gertie  turn  away 
disconsolately,  her  shoulders  so  drooping  that  her  blouse 
was  baggy  in  the  back.  He  mourned  that  he  had  not 
been  more  tender  with  her  that  week.  He  pictured  him- 
self kissing  Gertie  on  the  shore  of  Tamarack  Lake,  en- 
folded by  afternoon  and  the  mystery  of  sex  and  a  pro- 
tecting reverence  for  Gertie's  loneliness.  He  wanted  to 
go  back — back  for  one  more  day,  one  more  ride  with 
Gertie.  But  he  picked  up  a  mechanics  magazine,  glanced 
at  an  article  on  gliders,  read  in  the  first  paragraph  a 
prophecy  about  aviation,  slid  down  in  his  seat  with  his 
head  bent  over  the  magazine — and  the  idyl  of  Gertie  and 
afternoon  was  gone. 

He  was  reading  the  article  on  gliders  in  June,  1905,  so 
early  in  the  history  of  air  conquest  that  its  suggestions 
were  miraculous  to  him;  for  it  was  three  years  before 
Wilbur  Wright  was  to  startle  the  world  by  his  flights  at 
Le  Mans;  four  years  before  Bleriot  was  to  cross  the 
Channel — though,  indeed,  it  was  a  year  and  a  half  after 
the  Wrights'  first  secret  ascent  in  a  motor-driven  aero- 
plane at  Kittyhawk,  and  fourteen  years  after  Lilienthal 
had  begun  that  epochal  series  of  glider-flights  which  was 
followed  by  the  experiments  of  Pilcher  and  Chanute, 
Langley  and  Montgomery. 

The  article  declared  that  if  gasoline  or  alcohol  engines 
could  be  made  light  enough  we  should  all  be  aviating  to 
the  office  in  ten  years;  that  now  was  the  time  for  young- 
sters to  practise  gliding,  as  pioneers  of  the  new  age.  Carl 
"guessed"  that  flying  would  be  even  better  than  auto- 
mobiling.  He  made  designs  for  three  revolutionary  new 
aeroplanes,  drawing  on  the  margins  of  the  magazine  with 
a  tooth-mark-pitted  pencil  stub. 

Gertie  was  miles  back,  concealed  behind  piles  of  tri- 

73 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

planes  and  helicopters  and  following  -  surface  mono- 
planes which  the  wizard  inventor,  C.  Ericson,  was 
creating  and  ruthlessly  destroying.  ...  A  small  boy 
was  squalling  in  the  seat  opposite,  and  Carl  took  him 
from  his  tired  mother  and  lured  him  into  a  game  of 
tit-tat-toe. 

He  joined  the  Turk  and  the  wire-stringers  at  a  prairie 
hamlet — straggly  rows  of  unpainted  frame  shanties,  the 
stores  with  tin-corniced  false  fronts  that  pretended  to  be 
two  stones  high.  There  were  pig-pens  in  the  dooryards, 
and  the  single  church  had  a  square,  low,  white  steeple 
like  the  paper  cap  which  Labor  wears  in  the  posters. 
Farm-wagons  were  hitched  before  a  gloomy  saloon. 
Carl  was  exceeding  glum.  But  the  Turk  introduced  him 
to  a  University  of  Minnesota  Pharmacy  School  student 
who  was  with  the  crew  during  vacation,  and  the  three 
went  tramping  across  breezy,  flowered  prairies.  So  began 
for  Carl  a  galloping  summer. 

The  crew  strung  telephone  wire  from  pole  to  pole  all 
day,  playing  the  jokes  of  hardy  men,  and  on  Sunday 
loafed  in  haystacks,  recalling  experiences  from  Winnipeg 
to  El  Paso.  Carl  resolved  to  come  back  to  this  life  of  the 
open,  with  Gertie,  after  graduation.  He  would  buy  a 
ranch  "on  time."  Or  the  Turk  and  Carl  would  go 
exploring  in  Alaska  or  the  Orient.  "Law?"  he  would 
ask  himself  in  monologues,  "law?  Me  in  a  stuffy 
office?  Not  a  chance!" 

The  crew  stayed  for  four  weeks  in  a  boom  town  of  nine 
thousand,  installing  a  complete  telephone  system.  South- 
east of  the  town  lay  rolling  hills.  As  Carl  talked  with 
the  Turk  and  the  Pharmacy  School  man  on  a  hilltop,  the 
first  evening  of  their  arrival,  he  told  them  the  scientific 
magazine's  prophecies  about  aviation,  and  noted  that 
these  hills  were  of  the  sort  Lilienthal  would  probably  have 
chosen  for  his  glider-flights. 

"Say!  by  the  great  Jim  Hill,  let's  make  us  a  glider!" 
he  exulted,  sitting  up,  his  eyelids  flipping  rapidly. 

74 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"Sure!"  said  the  Pharmacy  man.  "How  would  you 
make  one?" 

"Why — uh — I  guess  you  could  make  a  frame  out  of 
willow — have  to;  the  willows  along  the  creeks  are  the 
only  kind  of  trees  near  here.  You'd  cover  it  with  var- 
nished cotton — that's  what  Lilienthal  did,  anyway.  But 
darned  if  I  know  how  you'd  make  the  planes  curved — 
cambered — like  he  did.  You  got  to  have  it  that  way.  I 
suppose  you'd  use  curved  stays.  Like  a  quarter  barrel- 
hoop.  ...  I  guess  it  would  be  better  to  try  to  make  a 
Chanute  glider — just  a  plain  pair  of  sup'rimposed  planes, 
instead  of  one  all  combobulated  like  a  bat's  wings,  like 
Lilienthal's  glider  was.  .  .  .  Or  we  coul<J  try  some  experi- 
ments with  paper  models Oh  no!  Thunder!  Let's 

make  a  glider." 

They  did. 

They  studied  with  aching  heads  the  dry-looking  tables 
of  lift  and  resistance  for  which  Carl  telegraphed  to  Chicago. 
Stripped  to  their  undershirts,  they  worked  all  through 
the  hot  prairie  evenings  in  the  oil-smelling,  greasy  engine- 
room  of  the  local  power-house,  in  front  of  the  dynamos, 
which  kept  evilly  throwing  out  green  sparks  and  rumbling 
the  mystic  syllable  "Om-m-m-m,"  to  greet  their  modern 
magic. 

They  hunted  for  three-quarter-inch  willow  rods,  but 
discarded  them  for  seasoned  ash  from  the  lumber-yard. 
They  coated  cotton  with  thin  varnish.  They  stopped 
to  dispute  furiously  over  angles  of  incidence,  bellowing, 
"Well,  look  here  then,  you  mutton-head;  I'll  draw  it  for 
you." 

On  their  last  Sunday  in  the  town  they  assembled  the 
glider,  single-surfaced,  like  a  monoplane,  twenty-two 
feet  in  span,  with  a  tail,  and  with  a  double  bar  beneath 
the  plane,  by  which  the  pilot  was  to  hang,  his  hands 
holding  cords  attached  to  the  entering  edge  of  the  plane, 
balancing  the  glider  by  movements  of  his  body. 

At  dawn  on  Monday  they  loaded  the  glider  upon  a 
6  75 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

wagon  and  galloped  with  it  out  to  a  forty-foot  hill.  They 
stared  down  the  easy  slope,  which  grew  in  steepness  and 
length  every  second,  and  thought  about  Lilienthal's 
death. 

"\V-w-well,"  shivered   the  Turk,  "who  tries  it  first?" 

All  three  pretended  to  be  adjusting  the  lashings,  wait- 
ing for  one  another,  till  Carl  snarled,  "Oh,  all  right! 
I'll  do  it  if  I  got  to." 

"Course  it  breaks  my  heart  to  see  you  swipe  the  honor," 
the  Turk  said,  "but  I'm  unselfish.  I'll  let  you  do  it. 
Brrrr!  It's  as  bad  as  the  first  jump  into  the  swimming- 
hole  in  spring." 

Carl  was  smiling  at  the  comparison  as  they  lifted  the 
glider,  with  him  holding  the  bars  beneath.  The  plane 
was  instantly  buoyed  up  like  a  cork  on  water  as  the  fifteen- 
mile  head-wind  poured  under  it.  He  stopped  smiling. 
This  was  a  dangerous  living  thing  he  was  going  to  guide. 
It  jerked  at  him  as  he  slipped  his  arms  over  the  suspended 
bars.  He  wanted  to  stop  and  think  this  all  over.  "Get 
it  done!"  he  snapped  at  himself,  and  began  to  run  down- 
hill, against  the  wind. 

The  wind  lifted  the  plane  again.  With  a  shock  Carl 
knew  that  his  feet  had  left  the  ground.  He  was  actually 
flying!  He  kicked  wildly  in  air.  All  his  body  strained 
to  get  balance  in  the  air,  to  control  itself,  to  keep  from 
falling,  of  which  he  now  felt  the  world-old  instinctive 
horror. 

The  plane  began  to  tip  to  one  side,  apparently  irresisti- 
bly, like  a  sheet  of  paper  turning  over  in  the  wind.  Carl 
was  sick  with  fear  for  a  tenth  of  a  second.  Every  cell 
in  his  body  shrank  before  coming  disaster.  He  flung  his 
legs  in  the  direction  opposite  to  the  tipping  of  the  plane. 
With  this  counter-balancing  weight,  the  glider  righted. 
It  was  running  on  an  even  keel,  twenty-five  feet  above  the 
sloping  ground,  while  Carl  hung  easily  by  the  double  bar 
beneath,  like  a  circus  performer  with  a  trapeze  under 
each  arm.  He  ventured  to  glance  down.  The  turf  was 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

flowing  beneath  him,  a  green  and  sunny  blur.     He  exulted. 
Flying! 

The  glider  dipped  forward.  Carl  leaned  back,  his 
arms  wide-spread.  A  gust  struck  the  plane,  head  on. 
Overloaded  at  the  back,  it  tilted  back,  then  soared  up  to 
thirty-five  or  forty  feet.  Slow-seeming,  inevitable,  the 
whole  structure  turned  vertically  upward. 

Carl  dangled  there  against  a  flimsy  sheet  of  wood  and 
cotton,  which  for  part  of  a  second  stuck  straight  up 
against  the  wind,  like  a  paper  on  a  screen-door. 

The  plane  turned  turtle,  slithered  sidewise  through  the 
air,  and  dropped,  horizontal  now,  but  upside  down,  Carl 
on  top. 

Thirty-five,  forty  feet  down. 

"I'm  up  against  it,"  was  his  only  thought  while  he  was 
falling. 

|  The  left  tip  of  the  plane  smashed  against  the  ground, 
crashing,  horribly  jarring.  But  it  broke  the  fall.  Carl 
shot  forward  and  landed  on  his  shoulder. 
|  He  got  up,  rubbing  his  shoulder,  wondering  at  the 
suspended  life  in  the  faces  of  the  other  two  as  they  ran 
down-hill  toward  him. 

"Jiminy,"  he  said.  "Glad  the  glider  broke  the  fall. 
Wish  we  had  time  to  make  a  new  glider,  with  wing-warp. 
Say,  we'll  be  late  on  the  job.  Better  beat  it  P.  D.  Q." 

The  others  stood  gaping. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

A  PILE  of  shoes  and  nose-guards  and  bicycle-pumps 
and  broken  hockey-sticks;  a  wall  covered  with  such 
stolen  signs  as  "East  College  Avenue,"  and  "Pants 
Presser  Ladys  Garments  Carefully  Done,"  and  "Dr. 
Sloats  Liniment  for  Young  and  Old";  a  broken-backed 
couch  with  a  red-and-green  afghan  of  mangy  tassels; 
an  ink  -  spattered  wooden  table,  burnt  in  small  black 
spots  along  the  edges;  a  plaster  bust  of  Martha  Wash- 
ington with  a  mustache  added  in  ink;  a  few  books;  an 
inundation  of  sweaters  and  old  hats;  and  a  large,  expen- 
sive mouth-organ — such  were  a  few  of  the  interesting 
characteristics  of  the  room  which  Carl  and  the  Turk  were 
occupying  as  room-mates  for  sophomore  year  at  Plato. 

Most  objectionable  sounds  came  from  the  room  con- 
stantly: the  Gang's  songs,  suggestive  laughter,  imitations 
of  cats  and  fowls  and  fog-horns.  These  noises  were  less 
ingenious,  however,  than  the  devices  of  the  Gang  for 
getting  rid  of  tobacco-smoke,  such  as  blowing  the  smoke 
up  the  stove. 

Carl  was  happy.  In  this  room  he  encouraged  stammer- 
ing Genie  Linderbeck  to  become  adaptable.  Here  he 
scribbled  to  Gertie  and  Ben  Rusk  little  notes  decorated 
with  badly  drawn  caricatures  of  himself  loafing.  Here, 
with  the  Turk,  he  talked  out  half  the  night,  planning 
future  glory  in  engineering.  Carl  adored  the  Turk  for 
his  frankness,  his  lively  speech,  his  interest  in  mechanics — 
and  in  Carl. 

Carl  was  still  out  for  football,  but  he  was  rather  light 
for  a  team  largely  composed  of  one-hundred-and-eighty- 

78 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

pound  Norwegians.  He  had  a  chance,  however.  He 
drove  the  banker's  car  two  or  three  evenings  a  week  and 
cared  for  the  banker's  lawn  and  furnace  and  cow.  He 
still  boarded  at  Mrs.  Henkel's,  as  did  jolly  Mae  Thurston, 
whom  he  took  for  surreptitious  rides  in  the  banker's  car, 
after  which  he  wrote  extra-long  and  pleasant  letters  to 
Gertie.  It  was  becoming  harder  and  harder  to  write  to 
Gertie,  because  he  had,  in  freshman  year,  exhausted  all 
the  things  one  can  say  about  the  weather  without  being 
profane.  When,  in  October,  a  new  bank  clerk  stormed, 
meteor-like,  the  Joralemon  social  horizon,  and  became 
devoted  to  Gertie,  as  faithfully  reported  in  letters  from 
Joe  Jordan,  Carl  was  melancholy  over  the  loss  of  a  com- 
rade. But  he  strictly  confined  his  mourning  to  leisure 
hours — and  with  books,  football,  and  chores  for  the 
banker,  he  was  a  busy  young  man.  .  .  .  After  about  ten 
days  it  was  a  relief  not  to  have  to  plan  letters  to  Gertie. 
The  emotions  that  should  have  gone  to  her  Carl  devoted 
to  Professor  Frazer's  new  course  in  modern  drama. 

This  course  was  officially  announced  as  a  study  of 
Bernard  Shaw,  Ibsen,  Strindberg,  Pinero,  Hauptmann, 
Sudermann,  Maeterlinck,  D'Annunzio,  and  Rostand; 
but  unofficially  announced  by  Professor  Frazer  as  an 
attempt  to  follow  the  spirit  of  to-day  wherever  it  should 
be  found  in  contemporary  literature.  Carl  and  the  Turk 
were  bewildered  but  stanchly  enthusiastic  disciples  of  the 
course.  They  made  every  member  of  the  Gang  enroll  in 
it,  and  discouraged  inattention  in  the  lecture-room  by 
dextrous  side-kicks. 

Even  to  his  ex-room-mate,  Plain  Smith,  the  grim  and 
slovenly  school-teacher  who  had  called  him  "bub"  and 
discouraged  his  confidences,  Carl  presented  the  attrac- 
tions of  Professor  Frazer's  lectures  when  he  met  him  on 
the  campus.  Smith  looked  quizzical  and  "guessed"  that 
plays  and  play-actin'  were  useless,  if  not  actually  immoral. 

"Yes,  but  this  isn't  just  plays,  my  young  friend,"  said 
Carl,  with  a  hauteur  new  but  not  exceedingly  impressive 

79 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

to  Plain  Smith.  "He  takes  up  all  these  new  stunts,  all 
this  new  philosophy  and  stuff  they  have  in  London  and 
Paris.  There's  something  besides  Shakespeare  and  the 
Bible!"  he  added,  intending  to  be  spiteful.  It  may  be 
stated  that  he  did  not  like  Plain  Smith. 

"What  new  philosophy?" 

"The  spirit  of  brotherhood.  I  suppose  you're  too 
orthodox  for  that!" 

"Oh  no,  sonny,  not  for  that,  not  for  that.  And  it 
ain't  so  very  new.  That's  what  Christ  taught!  No, 
sonny,  I  ain't  so  orthodox  but  what  I'm  willing  to  have 
'em  show  me  anything  that  tries  to  advance  brotherhood. 
Not  that  I  think  it's  very  likely  to  be  found  in  a  lot  of 
Noo  York  plays.  But  I'll  look  in  at  one  lesson,  anyway," 
and  Plain  Smith  clumped  away,  humming  "Greenland's 
Icy  Mountains." 

Professor  Frazer's  modern  drama  course  began  with 
Ibsen.  The  first  five  lectures  were  almost  conventional; 
they  were  an  attempt  to  place  contemporary  dramatists, 
with  reflections  on  the  box-office  standpoint.  But  his 
sixth  lecture  began  rather  unusually. 

There  was  an  audience  of  sixty-four  in  Lecture-room 
A — earnest  girl  students  bringing  out  note-books  and 
spectacle-cases,  frivolous  girls  feeling  their  back  hair,  and 
the  men  settling  down  with  a  "Come,  let's  get  it  over!" 
air,  or  glowing  up  worshipingly,  like  Eugene  Field  Linder- 
beck,  or  determined  not  to  miss  anything,  like  Carl — 
the  captious  college  audience,  credulous  as  to  statements 
of  fact  and  heavily  unresponsive  to  the  spirit.  Professor 
Frazer,  younger  than  half  a  dozen  of  the  plow-trained 
undergraduates,  thin  of  hair  and  sensitive  of  face,  sitting 
before  them,  with  one  hand  in  his  pocket  and  the  other 
nervously  tapping  the  small  reading-table,  spoke  quietly: 

"I'm  not  going  to  be  a  lecturer  to-day.  I'm  not  going 
to  analyze  the  plays  of  Shaw  which  I  assigned  to  you. 
You're  supposed  to  have  read  them  yourselves.  I  am 
going  to  imagine  that  I  am  at  tea  in  New  Haven,  or  down 

80 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

in  New  York,  at  dinner  in  the  basement  of  the  old  Bre- 
voort,  talking  with  a  bunch  of  men  who  are  trying  to  find 
out  where  the  world  is  going,  and  why  and  when  and  how, 
and  asking  who  are  the  prophets  who  are  going  to  show 
it  the  way.  We'd  be  getting  excited  over  Shaw  and  Wells. 
There's  something  really  worth  getting  excited  over. 

"These  men  have  perceived  that  this  world  is  not  a 
crazy-quilt  of  unrelated  races,  but  a  collection  of  human 
beings  completely  related,  with  all  our  interests — food 
and  ambitions  and  the  desire  to  play — absolutely  in 
common;  so  that  if  we  would  take  thought  all  together, 
and  work  together,  as  a  football  team  does,  we  would 
start  making  a  perfect  world. 

"That's  what  socialism — of  which  you're  beginning  to 
hear  so  much,  and  of  which  you're  going  to  hear  so  much 
more — means.  If  you  feel  genuinely  impelled  to  vote  the 
Republican  ticket,  that's  not  my  affair,  of  course.  Indeed, 
the  Socialist  party  of  this  country  constitutes  only  one 
branch  of  international  socialism.  But  I  do  demand  of 
you  that  you  try  to  think  for  yourselves,  if  you  are  going 
to  have  the  nerve  to  vote  at  all — think  of  it — to  vote  how 
this  whole  nation  is  to  be  conducted!  Doesn't  that 
tremendous  responsibility  demand  that  you  do  something 
more  than  inherit  your  way  of  voting?  that  you  really 
think,  think  hard,  why  you  vote  as  you  do?  ...  Pardon 
me  for  getting  away  from  the  subject  proper — yet  am  I, 
actually?  For  just  what  I  have  been  saying  is  one  of  the 
messages  of  Shaw  and  Wells. 

"The  great  vision  of  the  glory  that  shall  be,  not  in  one 
sudden  millennium,  but  slowly  advancing  toward  joys  of 
life  which  we  can  no  more  prevision  than  the  aboriginal 
medicine-man  could  imagine  the  X-ray!  I  wish  that  this 
were  the  time  and  the  place  to  rhapsodize  about  that 
vision,  as  William  Morris  has  done,  in  News  from  Nowhere. 
You  tell  me  that  the  various  brands  of  socialists  differ 
so  much  in  their  beliefs  about  this  future  that  the  be- 
wildered layman  can  make  nothing  at  all  of  their  theories. 

Si 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Very  well.  They  differ  so  much  because  there  are  so 
many  different  things  we  can  do  with  this  human  race.  .  .  . 
The  defeat  of  death;  the  life  period  advancing  to  ten- 
score  years  all  crowded  with  happy  activity.  The  solu- 
tion of  labor's  problem;  increasing  safety  and  decreasing 
hours  of  toil,  and  a  way  out  for  the  unhappy  consumer 
who  is  ground  between  labor  and  capital.  A  real  democ- 
racy and  the  love  of  work  that  shall  come  when  work  is  not 
relegated  to  wage-slaves,  but  joyously  shared  in  a  com- 
munity inclusive  of  the  living  beings  of  all  nations.  France 
and  Germany  uniting  precisely  as  Saxony  and  Prussia 
and  Bavaria  have  united.  And,  most  of  all,  a  general 
realization  that  the  fact  that  we  cannot  accomplish  all 
these  things  at  once  does  not  indicate  that  they  are  hope- 
less; an  understanding  that  one  of  the  wonders  of  the 
future  is  the  fact  that  we  shall  always,  in  all  ages,  have 
improvements  to  look  forward  to. 

"Fellow-students,  object  as  strongly  as  you  wish  to  the 
petty  narrowness  and  vituperation  of  certain  street- 
corner  ranters,  but  do  not  be  petty  and  narrow  and  vitu- 
perative in  doing  it! 

"Now,  to  relate  all  this  to  the  plays  of  Bernard  Shaw. 
When  he  says " 

Professor  Frazer's  utterances  seem  tamely  conservative 
nowadays;  but  this  was  in  1905,  in  a  small,  intensely 
religious  college  among  the  furrows.  Imagine  a  devout 
pastor  when  his  son  kicks  the  family  Bible  and  you  have 
the  mental  state  of  half  the  students  of  Plato  upon  hearing 
a  defense  of  socialism.  Carl,  catching  echoes  of  his  own 
talks  with  Bone  Stillman  in  the  lecture,  exultantly  glanced 
about,  and  found  the  class  staring  at  one  another  with 
frightened  anxiety.  He  saw  the  grim  Plain  Smith,  not 
so  much  angry  as  ill.  He  saw  two  class  clowns  snickering 
at  the  ecstasy  in  the  eyes  of  Genie  Linderbeck. 

In  the  corner   drug-store,  popularly  known   as  "The 

82 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Club,"  where  all  the  college  bloods  gather  to  drink  lemon 
phosphate,  an  excited  old  man,  whose  tieless  collar 
was  almost  concealed  by  his  tobacco-stained  beard, 
pushed  back  his  black  slouch-hat  with  the  G.  A.  R.  cord, 
and  banged  his  fist  on  the  prescription-counter,  shouting, 
half  at  the  clerk  and  half  at  the  students  matching  pennies 
on  the  soda-counter,  "I've  lived  in  Plato,  man  and  boy, 
for  forty-seven  years — ever  since  it  wa'n't  nothing  but  a 
frontier  trading-post.  I  packed  logs  on  my  back  and  I 
tramped  fifty-three  miles  to  get  me  a  yoke  of  oxen.  I 
remember  when  the  Indians  went  raiding  during  the  war 
and  the  cavalry  rode  here  from  St.  Paul.  And  this  town 
has  always  stood  for  decency  and  law  and  order.  But 
when  things  come  to  such  a  pass  that  this  fellow  Frazer 
or  any  of  the  rest  of  these  infidels  from  one  of  these  here 
Eastern  colleges  is  allowed  to  stand  up  on  his  hind  legs 
in  a  college  building  and  bray  about  anarchism  and  tell 
us  to  trample  on  the  old  flag  that  we  fought  for,  and  none 
of  these  professors  that  call  themselves  'reverends'  step 
in  and  stop,  him,  then  let  me  tell  you  I'm  about  ready  to 
pull  up  stakes  and  go  out  West,  where  there's  patriotism 
and  decency  still,  and  where  they'd  hang  one  of  these 
foreign  anarchists  to  the  nearest  lamp-post,  yes,  sir,  and 
this  fellow  Frazer,  too,  if  he  encouraged  them  in  their 
crank  notions.  Got  no  right  in  the  country,  anyway. 
Better  deport  'em  if  they  ain't  satisfied  with  the  way  we 
run  things.  I  won't  stand  for  preaching  anarchism,  and 
never  knew  any  decent  place  that  would,  never  since 
I  was  a  baby  in  Canada.  Yes,  sir,  I  mean  it;  I'm  an  old 
man,  but  I'd  pull  up  stakes  and  go  plugging  down  the 
Santa  Fe  trail  first,  and  I  mean  it." 

"Here's  your  Bog  Bitters,  Mr.  Goff,"  said  the  clerk, 
hastily,  as  a  passer-by  was  drawn  into  the  store  by  the  old 
man's  tirade. 

Mr.  GofF  stalked  out,  muttering,  and  the  college  sports 
at  the  soda-counter  grinned  at  one  another.  But  Gus 
Osberg,  of  the  junior  class,  remarked  to  Carl  Ericson: 

83 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"At  that,  though,  there's  a  good  deal  to  what  old  Goff 
says.  Bet  a  hat  Prexy  won't  stand  for  Prof  Frazer's 
talking  anarchy.  Fellow  in  the  class  told  me  it  was 
fierce  stuff  he  was  talking.  Reg'lar  anarchy." 

"Rats!  It  wasn't  anything  of  the  kind,"  protested  Carl. 
"I  was  there  and  I  heard  the  whole  thing.  He  just 
explained  what  this  Bernard  Shaw  that  writes  plays  meant 
by  socialism." 

"Well,  even  so,  don't  you  think  it's  kind  of  unnecessary 
to  talk  publicly,  right  out  in  a  college  lecture-room,  about 
socialism?"  inquired  a  senior  who  was  high  up  in  the 
debating  society. 

"Well,  thunder !"  was  all  Carl  said,  as  the  whole 

group  stared  at  him.  He  felt  ridiculous;  he  was  afraid  of 
seeming  to  be  a  "crank."  He  escaped  from  the  drug-store. 

When  he  arrived  at  Mrs.  Henkel's  boarding-house  for 
supper  the  next  evening  he  found  the  students  passing 
from  hand  to  hand  a  copy  of  the  town  paper,  the  Plato 
Weekly  Times,  which  bore  on  the  front  page  what  the 
town  regarded  as  a  red-hot  news  story: 

PLATOBPROFESSOR 

TALKS  SEDITIOUSLY 

As  we  go  to  press  we  learn  that  rumors  are  flying  about  the 
campus  that  the  powers  that  be"  are  highly  incensed  by  the 
remarks  of  a  well-known  member  of  the  localifaculty  praising 
Socialism  and  other  form  of  anarchy.  It  is  said  that  one  of  the 
older  members  of  the  faculty  will  demand  from  the  erring  teacher 
an  explanation  of  his  remarks  which  are  alleged  to  have  taken 
the  form  of  a  defense  of  the  English  anarchist  Bernhard  Shaw. 
Those  on  the  que  vive  are  expecting  sensational  developments 
and  campus  talk  is  so  extensivly  occupied  with  discussions  of 
the  affair  that  the  important  coming  game  with  St.  John's  col- 
lege is  almost  forgotten. 

While  the  TIMES  has  always  supportedB Plato  College  as 
one  of  the  chief  glories  in  the  proud  crown  of  Minnesota  learning, 
we  can  but  illy  stomach  such  news.  It  goes  without  saying  that 
we  cannot  too  strongly  disapprove  express  our  disaprova  lof 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

such  incendiary  utterances  and  we  shall  fearlessly  report  the 
whole  of  this  fair  let  the  chips  fall  where  they  may. 

"There,  Mr.  Ericson,"  said  Mrs.  Henkel,  a  plump, 
decent,  disapproving  person,  who  had  known  too  many 
generations  of  great  Platonians  to  be  impressed  by  any- 
thing, "you  see  what  the  public  thinks  of  your  Professor 
Frazer.  I  told  you  people  wouldn't  stomach  such  news, 
and  I  wouldn't  wonder  if  they  strongly  disapproved." 

"This  ain't  anything  but  gossip,"  said  Carl,  feebly; 
but  as  he  read  the  account  in  the  Weekly  Times  he  was 
sick  and  frightened,  such  was  his  youthful  awe  of  print. 
He  wanted  to  beat  the  mossy-whiskered  editor  of  the 
Times,  who  always  had  white  food-stains  on  his  lapels. 
When  he  raised  his  eyes  the  coquette  Mae  Thurston  tried 
to  cheer  him:  "It  '11  all  come  out  in  the  wash,  Eric;  don't 
worry.  These  editors  have  to  have  something  to  write 
about  or  they  couldn't  fill  up  the  paper." 

He  pressed  her  foot  under  the  table.  He  was  chatty, 
and  helped  to  keep  the  general  conversation  away  from 
the  Frazer  affair;  but  he  was  growing  more  and  more 
angry,  with  a  desire  for  effective  action  which  expressed  it- 
self within  him  only  by, "  I'll  show  'em !  Makes  me  so  sore!' ' 

Everywhere  they  discussed  and  rediscussed  Professor 
Frazer:  in  the  dressing-room  of  the  gymnasium,  where 
the  football  squad  dressed  in  the  sweat-reeking  air  and 
shouted  at  one  another,  balancing  each  on  one  leg  before 
small  lockers,  and  rubbing  themselves  with  brown,  unclean 
Turkish  towels;  in  the  neat  rooms  of  girl  co-eds  with  their 
banners  and  cushions  and  pink  comforters  and  chafing- 
dishes  of  nut  fudge  and  photographic  postal-cards  show- 
ing the  folks  at  home;  in  the  close,  horse-smelling,  lap- 
robe  and  whip  scattered  office  of  the  town  livery-stable, 
where  Mr.  Goff  droned  with  the  editor  of  the  Times. 

Everywhere  Carl  heard  the  echoes,  and  resolved,  "I've 
got  to  do  something!" 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  day  of  Professor  Frazer's  next  lecture,  a  rain- 
sodden  day  at  the  end  of  October,  with  the  stubble- 
fields  bleakly  shelterless  beyond  the  campus.  The  rain 
splashed  up  from  pools  on  the  worn  brick  walks  and 
dripped  from  trees  and  whipped  about  buildings,  soaking 
the  legs  and  leaving  them  itchingly  wet  and  the  feet 
sloshily  uncomfortable.  Carl  returned  to  his  room  at  one; 
talked  to  the  Turk,  his  feet  thrust  against  the  side  of  their 
rusty  stove.  He  wanted  to  keep  three  o'clock,  the  hour  of 
Frazer's  lecture,  from  coming.  "I  feel  as  if  I  was  in  for  a 
fight  and  scared  to  death  about  it.  Listen  to  that  rain 
outside.  Gee!  but  the  old  dame  keeps  these  windows 
dirty.  I  hope  Frazer  will  give  it  to  them  good  and  hard. 
I  wish  we  could  applaud  him.  I  do  feel  funny,  like 
something  tragic  was  going  to  happen." 

"Oh,  tie  that  dog  outside,"  yawned  the  Turk,  stanch 
adherent  of  Carl,  and  therefore  of  Professor  Frazer,  but 
not  imaginative.  "Come  on,  young  Kerl;  I'll  play  you  a 
slick  little  piece  on  the  mouth-organ.  Heh?" 

"Oh,  thunder!  I'm  too  restless  to  listen  to  anything 
except  a  cannon."  Carl  stumped  to  the  window  and 
pondered  on  the  pool  of  water  flooding  the  graying  grass 
stems  in  the  shabby  yard. 

When  it  was  time  to  start  for  Professor  Frazer's  lecture 
the  Turk  blurted:  "Why  don't  we  stay  away  and  forget 
about  it  ?  Get  her  off  your  nerves.  Let's  go  down  to  the 
bowling-alley  and  work  up  a  sweat." 

"  Not  a  chance,  Turk.  He'll  want  all  the  supporters  he's 
got.  And  you'd  hate  to  stay  away  as  much  as  I  would. 

86 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

I  feel  cheered  up  now;  all  ready  for  the  scrap.  Yip! 
Come  on!" 

"All  right,  governor.  I  like  the  scrap,  all  right,  but 
I  don't  want  to  see  you  get  all  worked  up." 

Through  the  rain,  across  the  campus,  an  unusual  num- 
ber of  students  in  shining,  cheap,  black  raincoats  were 
hastening  to  the  three-o'clock  classes,  clattering  up  the 
stone  steps  of  the  Academic  Building,  talking  excitedly, 
glancing  up  at  the  arched  door  as  though  they  expected 
to  see  something  startling.  Dozens  stared  at  Carl.  He 
felt  rather  important.  It  was  plain  that  he  was  known 
as  a  belligerent,  a  supporter  of  Professor  Frazer.  As 
he  came  to  the  door  of  Lecture-room  A  he  found  that 
many  of  the  crowd  were  deserting  their  proper  classes  to 
attend  the  Frazer  event.  He  bumped  down  into  his  own 
seat,  gazing  back  superciliously  at  the  outsiders  who  were 
edging  into  unclaimed  seats  at  the  back  of  the  room  or 
standing  about  the  door — students  from  other  classes, 
town  girls,  the  young  instructor  in  French,  German,  and 
music;  a  couple  of  town  club-women  in  glasses  and  galoshes 
and  woolen  stockings  bunchy  at  the  ankles.  Every  one 
was  rapidly  whispering,  watching  every  one  else,  peeping 
often  at  the  platform  and  the  small  door  beside  it  through 
which  Professor  Frazer  would  enter.  Carl  had  a  smile 
ready  for  him.  But  there  was  no  chance  that  the  smije 
would  be  seen.  There  must  have  been  a  hundred  and 
fifty  in  the  room,  seated  and  standing,  though  there  were 
but  seventy  in  the  course,  and  but  two  hundred  and 
fifty-six  students  in  the  whole  college  that  year. 

Carl  looked  back.  He  clenched  his  fist  and  pounded  the 
soft  side  of  it  on  his  thigh,  drawing  in  his  breath,  puffing 
it  out  with  a  long  exasperated  "Hellll!"  For  the  Greek 
professor,  the  comma-sized,  sandy-whiskered  martinet, 
to  whom  nothing  that  was  new  was  moral  and  nothing 
that  was  old  was  to  be  questioned  by  any  undergraduate, 
stalked  into  the  room  like  indignant  Napoleon  posing 
before  two  guards  and  a  penguin  at  St.  Helena.  A  student 

87 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

in  the  back  row  thriftily  gave  the  Greek  god  his  seat. 
The  god  sat  down,  with  a  precise  nod.  Instantly  a 
straggly  man  with  a  celluloid  collar  left  the  group  by 
the  door,  whisked  over  to  the  Greek  professor,  and  fawned 
upon  him.  It  was  the  fearless  editor  and  owner  (also 
part-time  type-setter)  of  the  Plato  Weekly  Times,  who 
dated  back  to  the  days  of  Washington  flat-bed  hand- 
presses  and  pure  JefFersonian  politics,  and  feared  neither 
man  nor  devil,  though  he  was  uneasy  in  the  presence  of 
his  landlady.  He  ostentatiously  flapped  a  wad  of  copy- 
paper  in  his  left  hand,  and  shook  a  spatter  of  ink-drops 
from  a  fountain-pen  as  he  interviewed  the  Greek  professor, 
who  could  be  seen  answering  pompously.  Carl  was  hating 
them  both,  fearing  the  Greek  as  a  faculty  spy  on  Frazer, 
picturing  himself  kicking  the  editor,  when  he  was  aware  of 
a  rustling  all  over  the  room,  of  a  general  turning  of  heads 
toward  the  platform. 

He  turned.  He  was  smiling  like  a  shy  child  in  his  hero- 
worship.  Professor  Frazer  was  inconspicuously  walking 
through  the  low  door  beside  the  platform.  Frazer' s  lips 
were  together.  He  was  obviously  self-conscious.  His 
motions  were  jerky.  He  elaborately  did  not  look  at  the 
audience.  He  nearly  stumbled  on  the  steps  up  to  the 
platform.  His  hand  shook  as  he  drew  papers  from  a 
leather  portfolio  and  arranged  them  on  the  small  reading- 
table.  One  of  the  papers  escaped  and  sailed  off  the 
platform,  nearly  to  the  front  row.  Nearly  every  one  in 
the  room  snickered.  Frazer  flushed.  A  girl  student  in 
the  front  row  nervously  bounded  out  of  her  seat,  picked 
up  the  paper,  and  handed  it  up  to  Frazer.  They  both 
fumbled  it,  and  their  heads  nearly  touched.  Most  of  the 
crowd  laughed  audibly. 

Professor  Frazer  sat  down  in  his  low  chair,  took  out  his 
watch  with  a  twitching  hand,  and  compared  his  time 
with  the  clock  at  the  back  of  the  room — and  so  closely 
were  the  amateur  executioners  observing  their  victim 
that  every  eye  went  back  to  the  clock  as  well.  Even 

88 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Carl  was  guilty  of  that  imitation.  Consequently  he  saw 
the  editor,  standing  at  the  back,  make  notes  on  his 
copy-paper  and  smirk  like  an  ill-bred  hound  stealing  a 
bone.  And  the  Greek  professor  stared  at  Frazer's  gauche 
movements  with  a  grim  smugness  that  indicated,  "Quite 
the  sort  of  thing  I  expected."  The  Greek's  elbows  were 
on  the  arm  of  the  seat,  and  he  held  up  before  his  breast  a 
small  red-leather-covered  note-book  which  he  supercili- 
ously tapped  with  a  thin  pencil.  He  was  waiting.  Like 
a  judge  of  the  Inquisition.  .  .  . 

"Old  Greek  's  going  to  take  notes  and  make  a  report 
to  the  faculty  about  what  Frazer  says,"  reflected  Carl. 
"  If  I  could  only  get  hold  of  his  notes  and  destroy  them!" 

Carl  turned  again.  It  was  just  three.  Professor 
Frazer  had  risen.  Usually  he  sat  while  lecturing.  Fifty 
.whispers  commented  on  that  fact;  fifty  regular  members 
of  the  course  became  self-important  through  knowing  it. 
Frazer  was  leaning  slightly  against  the  table.  It  moved 
an  inch  or  two  with  his  weight,  but  by  this  time  every 
one  was  too  high-strung  to  laugh.  He  was  pale.  He  re- 
arranged his  papers.  He  had  to  clear  his  throat  twice 
before  he  could  speak,  in  the  now  silent,  vulturishly 
attentive  room,  smelling  of  wet  second-rate  clothes. 

The  gusty  rain  could  be  heard.  They  all  hitched  in 
their  seats. 

"Oh,  Frazer  cant  be  going  to  retract,"  groaned  Carl; 
"but  he's  scared." 

Carl  suddenly  wished  himself  away  from  all  this  useless 
conflict;  out  tramping  the  wet  roads  with  the  Turk,  or 
slashing  through  the  puddles  at  thirty-five  miles  an  hour 
in  the  banker's  car.  He  noted  stupidly  that  Genie 
Linderbeck's  hair  was  scarcely  combed.  He  found  he  was 
saying,  "Frazer  '11  flunk,  flunk,  flunk;  he's  going  to  flunk, 
flunk,  flunk." 

Then  Frazer  spoke.  His  voice  sounded  harsh  and  un- 
rhythmical, but  soon  swung  into  the  natural  periods  of  a 
public  speaker  as  he  got  into  his  lecture: 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"My  friends,"  said  he,  "a  part  of  you  have  come  here 
legitimately,  to  hear  a  lecture;  a  part  to  satisfy  the 
curiosity  aroused  by  rumors  to  the  effect  that  I  am  likely 
to  make  indecorous  and  indecent  remarks,  which  your 
decorum  and  decency  make  you  wish  to  hear,  and  of 
which  you  will  carry  away  evil  and  twisted  reports,  to 
gain  the  reputation  of  being  fearless  defenders  of  the  truth. 
It  is  a  temptation  to  gratify  your  desire  and  shock  you — a 
far  greater  temptation  than  to  be  repentant  and  reac- 
tionary. Only,  it  occurs  to  me  that  this  place  and  time 
are  supposed  to  be  devoted  to  a  lecture  by  Henry  Frazer 
on  his  opinions  about  contemporary  drama.  It  is  in  no 
sense  to  be  given  to  the  puling  defense  of  a  martyr,  nor 
to  the  sensational  self-advertisement  of  either  myself  or 
any  of  you.  I  have  no  intention  of  devoting  any  part  of 
my  lecture,  aside  from  these  introductory  adumbrations, 
to  the  astonishing  number  of  new  friends  whose  bright 
and  morning  faces  I  see  before  me.  I  shall  neither  be  so 
insincerely  tactful  as  to  welcome  you,  nor  so  frightened 
as  to  ignore  you.  Nor  shall  I  invite  you  to  come  to  me 
with  any  complaints  you  have  about  me.  I  am  far  too 
busy  with  my  real  work! 

"I  am  not  speaking  patiently.  I  am  not  patient  with 
you!  I  am  not  speaking  politely.  Truly,  I  do  not  think 
that  I  shall  much  longer  be  polite! 

"Wait.  That  sounds  now  in  my  ears  as  rhetorical! 
Forgive  me,  and  translate  my  indiscretions  into  more 
colloquial  language. 

"Though  from  rumors  I  have  overheard,  I  fancy  some 
of  you  will  do  that,  anyway.  .  .  .  And  now,  I  think,  you 
see  where  I  stand. 

"Now  then.  For  such  of  you  as  have  a  genuine  interest 
in  the  brilliant  work  of  Berhard  Shaw  I  shall  first  continue 
the  animadversions  on  the  importance  of  his  social  thought, 
endeavor  to  link  it  with  the  great  and  growing  vision  of 
H.  G.  Wells  (novelist  and  not  dramatist  though  he  is, 
because  of  the  significance  of  his  new  books,  Kips  and 

90 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Mankind  in  the  Making),  and  point  out  the  serious  pur- 
pose that  seems  to  me  to  underlie  Shaw's  sarcastic  pic- 
tures of  life's  shams. 

"In  my  last  lecture  I  endeavored  to  present  the  destruc- 
tive side  of  present  social  theories  as  little  as  possible; 
to  dwell  more  on  the  keen  desire  of  the  modern  thinkers 
for  constructive  imagination.  But  I  judge  that  I  was 
regarded  as  too  destructive,  which  amuses  me,  and  to 
which  I  shall  apply  the  antidote  of  showing  how  destruc- 
tive modern  thought  is  and  must  be — whether  running 
with  sootily  smoking  torch  of  individuality  in  Bakunin, 
or  hissing  in  Nietzsche,  or  laughing  at  Olympus  in  Ber- 
nard Shaw.  My  'radicalism'  has  been  spoken  of.  Rad- 
ical! Do  you  realize  that  I  am  not  suggesting  that  there 
might  possibly  some  day  be  a  revolution  in  America,  but 
rather  that  now  I  am  stating  that  there  is,  this  minute, 
and  for  some  years  has  been,  an  actual  state  of  warfare 
between  capital  and  labor?  Do  you  know  that  daily 
more  people  are  saying  openly  and  violently  that  we 
starve  our  poor,  we  stuff  our  own  children  with  useless 
bookishness,  and  work  the  children  of  others  in  mills  and 
let  them  sell  papers  on  the  streets  in  red-light  districts 
at  night,  and  thereby  prove  our  state  nothing  short  of 
insane  ?  If  you  tell  me  that  there  is  no  revolution  because 
there  are  no  barricades,  I  point  to  actual  battles  at 
Homestead,  Pullman,  and  the  rest.  If  you  say  that 
there  has  been  no  declaration  of  war,  open  war,  I  shall 
read  you  editorials  from  The  Appeal  to  Reason. 

"Mind  you,  I  shall  not  say  whether  I  am  enlisted  for  or 
against  the  revolutionary  army.  But  I  demand  that  you 
look  about  you  and  understand  the  significance  of  the 
industrial  disturbances  and  religious  unrest  of  the  time. 
Never  till  then  will  you  understand  anything — certainly 
not  that  Shaw  is  something  more  than  an  enfant  terrible; 
Ibsen  something  more  than  an  ill-natured  old  man  with 
dyspepsia  and  a  silly  lack  of  interest  in  skating.  Then 
you  will  realize  that  in  the  most  extravagant  utterances 
7  91 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

of  a  red-shirted  strike-leader  there  may  be  more  fervent 
faith  and  honor,  oftentimes,  than  in  the  virgin  prayers  of 
a  girl  who  devoutly  attends  Christian  Endeavor,  but 
presumes  to  call  Emma  Goldman  'that  dreadful  woman.' 
Follow  the  labor-leader.  Or  fight  him,  good  and  hard. 
But  do  not  overlook  him. 

"But  I  must  be  more  systematic.  When  John  Tan- 
ner's independent  chauffeur,  of  whom  you  have — I  hope 
you  have — read  in  Man  and  Superman " 

Carl  looked  about.  Many  were  frowning;  a  few 
leaning  sidewise  to  whisper  to  neighbors,  with  a  per- 
plexed head-shake  that  plainly  meant,  "I  don't  quite 
get  that."  Wet  feet  were  shifted  carefully;  breaths 
caught  quickly;  hands  nervously  played  with  lower 
lips.  The  Greek  professor  was  writing  something. 
Carl's  ex-room-mate,  Plain  Smith,  was  rigid,  staring 
unyieldingly  at  the  platform.  Carl  hated  Smith's  sin- 
ister stillness. 

Professor  Frazer  was  finishing  his  lecture: 

"If  it  please  you,  flunk  this  course,  don't  read  a  single 
play  I  assign  to  you,  be  disrespectful,  disbelieve  all  my 
contentions.  And  I  shall  still  be  content.  But  do  not, 
as  you  are  living  souls,  blind  yourself  to  the  fact  that 
there  is  a  world-wide  movement  to  build  a  wider  new 
world — and  that  the  world  needs  it — and  that  in  Jamaica 
Mills,  on  land  owned  by  a  director  of  Plato  College,  there 
are  two  particularly  vile  saloons  which  you  must  wipe 
out  before  you  disprove  me!"  Silence  for  ten  seconds. 
Then,  "That  is  all." 

The  crowd  began  to  move  hesitatingly,  while  Professor 
Frazer  hastily  picked  up  his  papers  and  raincoat  and 
hurried  out  through  the  door  beside  the  platform.  Voices 
immediately  rose  in  a  web  of  talk,  many-colored,  hot- 
colored. 

Carl  babbled  to  the  man  next  him,  "He  sure  is  broad. 

92 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

He  doesn't  care  whether  they're  conservative  or  not.    And 
some  sensation  at  the  end!" 

"Heh?     What?     Him?"     The  sophomore  was  staring. 

"Yes.     Why,  sure!     Whadya  mean?"  demanded  Carl. 

"Well,  and  wha*  do  you  mean  by  *  broad'?  Sure!  He's 
broad  just  like  a  razor  edge." 

"Heh?"  echoed  the  next  man  down  the  row,  a  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  senior.  "Do  you  mean  to  say  you  liked  it?" 

"Why,  sure!     Why  not?     Didn't  you?" 

"Oh  yes.  Yes  indeed!  All  he  said  was  that  scarlet 
women  like  Emma  Goldman  were  better  than  a  C.  E. 
girl,  and  that  he  hoped  his  students  would  bluff  the  course 
and  flunk  it,  and  that  we  could  find  booze  at  Jamaica 
Mills,  and  a  few  little  things  like  that.  That's  all.  Sure! 
That's  the  sort  of  thing  we  came  here  to  study."  The 
senior  was  buttoning  his  raincoat  with  angry  fingers. 

"That's Why,    the    man    was    insane!     And    the 

way  he  denounced   decency  and Oh,  I  can't  talk 

about  it!" 

"W-w-w-well  by  gosh,  of  all  the — the "  spluttered 

Carl.  "You  and  your  Y.  M.  C.  A. — calling  yourself 
religious,  and  misrepresenting  like  that — you  and  your — 
Why,  you  ain't  worth  arguing  with.  I  don't  believe  you 
'came  to  study'  anything.  You  know  it  all  already." 
Passionate  but  bewildered,  trying  not  to  injure  the  cause 
of  Frazer  by  being  nasty,  he  begged:  "Straight,  didn't 
you  like  his  spiel?  Didn't  it  give  you  some  new  ideas?" 

The  senior  vouchsafed:  "No,  'me  and  my  Y.  M.' 
didn't  like  it.  Now  don't  let  me  keep  you,  Ericson.  I 
suppose  you'll  be  wanting  to  join  dear  Mr.  Frazer  in  a 
highball;  you're  such  a  pet  of  his.  Did  he  teach  you  to 
booze?  I  understand  you're  good  at  it." 

"You  apologize  or  I'll  punch  your  face  off,"  said  Carl. 
"I  don't  understand  Professor  Frazer's  principles  like  I 
ought  to.  I'm  not  fighting  for  them.  Prob'ly  would  if 
I  knew  enough.  But  I  don't  like  your  face.  It's  too 
long.  It's  like  a  horse's  face.  It's  an  insult  to  Frazer 

93 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

to  have  a  horse-faced  guy  listen  to  him.  You  apologize 
for  having  a  horse  face,  see?" 

"You're  bluffing.  You  wouldn't  start  anything  here, 
anyway." 

"Apologize!"  Carl's  fist  was  clenched.  People  were 
staring. 

"Cut  it  out,  will  you!     I  didn't  mean  anything." 

"You  wouldn't,"  snapped  Carl,  and  rammed  his  way 
out,  making  wistful  boyish  plans  to  go  to  Frazer  with 
devotion  and  offers  of  service  in  a  fight  whose  causes 
grew  more  confused  to  him  every  moment.  Beside  him, 
as  he  hurried  off  to  football  practice,  strode  a  big  line- 
man of  the  junior  class,  cajoling: 

"Calm  down,  son.     You  can't  lick  the  whole  college." 

"But  it  makes  me  so  sore " 

"Oh,  I  know,  but  it  strikes  me  that  no  matter  how 
much  you  like  Frazer,  he  was  going  pretty  far  when  he 
said  that  anarchists  had  more  sense  than  decent  folks." 

"He  didn't!  You  didn't  get  him.  He  meant O 

Lord,  what's  the  use!" 

He  did  not  say  another  word  as  they  hastened  to  the 
gymnasium  for  indoor  practice. 

He  was  sure  that  they  who  knew  of  his  partisanship 
would  try  to  make  him  lose  his  temper.  "Dear  Lord, 
please  just  let  me  take  out  just  one  bonehead  and  beat 
him  to  a  pulp,  and  then  I'll  be  good  and  not  open  my 
head  again,"  was  his  perfectly  reverent  prayer  as  he 
stripped  before  his  locker. 

Carl  and  most  of  the  other  substitutes  had  to  wait,  and 
most  of  them  gossiped  of  the  lecture.  They  all  greedily 
discussed  Frazer's  charge  that  some  member  of  the 
corporation  owned  saloon  lots,  and  tried  to  decide  who 
it  was,  but  not  one  of  them  gave  Frazer  credit.  Twenty 
times  Carl  wanted  to  deny;  twenty  times  speech  rose  in 
him  so  hotly  that  he  drew  a  breath  and  opened  his  mouth; 
but  each  time  he  muttered  to  himself:  "Oh,  shut  up! 
You'll  only  make  'em  worse."  Students  who  had  at- 

94 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

tended  the  lecture  declared  that  Professor  Frazer  had 
advocated  bomb-throwing  and  obscenity,  and  the  others 
believed,  marveling,  "Well,  well,  well,  well!"  with  unctu- 
ous appreciation  of  the  scandal. 

Still  Carl  sat  aloof  on  a  pair  of  horizontal  bars,  swinging 
his  legs  with  agitated  quickness,  while  the  others  covertly 
watched  him — slim,  wire-drawn,  his  china-blue  eyes 
blurred  with  fury,  his  fair  Norse  skin  glowing  dull  red, 
his  chest  strong  under  his  tight  football  jersey;  a  clean- 
carved  boy. 

The  rubber  band  of  his  nose-guard  snapped  harshly 
as  he  plucked  at  it,  playing  a  song  of  hatred  on  that  hard 
little  harp. 

An  insignificant  thing  made  him  burst  out.  Tommy 
La  Croix,  the  French  Canuck,  a  quick,  grinning,  evil- 
spoken,  tobacco-chewing,  rather  likeable  young  thug, 
stared  directly  at  Carl  and  said,  loudly:  "'Nother  thing 
I  noticed  was  that  Frazer  didn't  have  his  pants  pressed. 
Funny,  ain't  it,  that  when  even  these  dudes  from  Yale 
get  to  be  cranks  they're  short  on  baths  and  tailors  ?" 

Carl  slid  from  the  parallel  bars.  He  walked  up  to  the 
line  of  substitutes,  glanced  sneeringly  along  them,  drama- 
tized himself  as  a  fighting  rebel,  remarked,  "Half  of  you 
are  too  dumm  to  get  Frazer,  and  the  other  half  are  old- 
woman  gossips  and  ought  to  be  drinking  tea,"  and  gloomed 
away  to  the  dressing-room,  while  behind  him  the  substi- 
tutes laughed,  and  some  one  called:  "Sorry  you  don't 
like  us,  but  we'll  try  to  bear  up.  Going  to  lick  the  whole 
college,  Ericson?" 

His  ears  burned,  in  the  dressing-room.  He  did  not  feel 
that  they  had  been  much  impressed. 

To  tell  the  next  day  or  two  in  detail  would  be  to  make 
many  books  about  the  mixed  childishness  and  heroic 
fineness  of  Carl's  partisanship;  to  repeat  a  thousand 
rumors  running  about  the  campus  to  the  effect  that 
the  faculty  would  demand  Frazer's  resignation;  to  explain 

95 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

the  reason  why  Frazer's  charge  that  a  Plato  director 
owned  land  used  by  saloons  was  eagerly  whispered  for  a 
little  while,  then  quite  forgotten,  while  Frazer's  reputa- 
tion as  a  "crank"  was  never  forgotten,  so  much  does 
muck  resent  the  muck-raker;  to  describe  Carl's  brief  call 
on  Frazer  and  his  confusing  discovery  that  he  had  nothing 
to  say;  to  repeat  the  local  paper's  courageous  reports  of 
the  Frazer  affair,  Turk's  great  oath  to  support  Frazer 
"through  hell  and  high  water,"  Turk's  repeated  defiance: 
"Well,  by  golly!  we'll  show  the  mutts,  but  I  wish  we 
could  do  something";  to  chronicle  dreary  classes  whose 
dullness  was  evident  to  Carl,  now,  after  his  interest  in 
Frazer's  lectures. 

Returning  from  Genie  Linderbeck's  room,  Carl  found 
a  letter  from  Gertie  Cowles  on  the  black-walnut  hat- 
rack.  Without  reading  it,  but  successfully  befooling 
himself  into  the  belief  that  he  was  glad  to  have  it,  he 
went  whistling  up  to  his  room. 

Ray  Cowles  and  Howard  Griffin,  those  great  seniors, 
sat  tilted  back  in  wooden  chairs,  and  between  them  was 
the  lord  of  the  world,  Mr.  Bjorken,  the  football  coach,  a 
large,  amiable,  rather  religious  young  man,  who  believed 
in  football,  foreign  missions,  and  the  Democratic  party. 

"Hello!  Waiting  for  me  or  the  Turk?"  faltered  Carl, 
gravely  shaking  hands  all  round. 

"Just  dropped  up  to  see  you  for  a  second,"  said  Mr. 
Bjorken. 

"  Sorry  the  Turk  wasn't  here."  Carl  had  an  ill-defined 
feeling  that  he  wanted  to  keep  them  from  becoming  seri- 
ous as  long  as  he  could. 

Ray  Cowles  cleared  his  throat.  Never  again  would  the 
black-haired  Adonis,  blossom  of  the  flower  of  Joralemon,  be 
so  old  and  sadly  sage  as  then.  "We  want  to  talk  to  you 
seriously  about  something — for  your  own  sake.  You 
know  I've  always  been  interested  in  you,  and  Howard, 
and  course  we're  interested  in  you  as  frat  brothers,  too. 

- 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

For  old  Joralemon  and  Plato,  eh  ?     Mr.  Bjorken  believes — 
might  as  well  tell  him  now,  don't  you  think,  Mr.  Bjorken?" 

The  coach  gave  a  regally  gracious  nod.  Hitching 
about  on  the  wood-box,  Carl  felt  the  bottom  drop  out  of 
his  anxious  stomach. 

"Well,  Mr.  Bjorken  thinks  you're  practically  certain 
to  make  the  team  next  year,  and  maybe  you  may  even 
get  put  in  the  Hamlin  game  for  a  few  minutes  this  year, 
and  get  your  P." 

"Honest?" 

"Yes,  if  you  do  something  for  old  Plato,  same  's  you 
expect  her  to  do  something  for  you."  Ray  was  quite 
sincere.  "But  not  if  you  put  the  team  discipline  on  the 
bum  and  disgrace  Omega  Chi.  Of  course  I  can't  speak 
as  an  actual  member  of  the  team,  but  still,  as  a  senior,  I 
hear  things " 

"How  d'you  mean  'disgrace'?" 

"Don't  you  know  that  because  you've  been  getting  so 
savage  about  Frazer  the  whole  team  's  getting  mad  ?"  said 
the  coach.  "Cowles  and  Griffin  and  I  have  been  talking 
over  the  whole  proposition.  Your  boosting  Frazer : 

"Look  here,"  from  Carl,  "I  won't  crawl  down  on  my 
opinion  about  Frazer.  Folks  haven't  understood  him." 

"Lord  love  you,  son,"  soothed  Howard  Griffin,  "we 
aren't  trying  to  change  your  opinion  of  Frazer.  We're 
your  friends,  you  know.  We're  proud  of  you  for  standing 
up  for  him.  Only  thing  is,  now  that  he's  practically 
fired,  just  tell  me  how  it's  going  to  help  him  or  you  or 
anybody  else,  now,  to  make  everybody  sore  by  roasting 
them  because  they  can't  agree  with  you.  Boost;  don't 
knock!  Don't  make  everybody  think  you're  a  crank." 

"To  be  frank,"  added  Mr.  Bjorken,  "you're  just  as 
likely  to  hurt  Frazer  as  to  help  him  by  stirring  up  all  this 
bad  blood.  Look  here.  I  suppose  that  if  the  faculty 
had  already  fired  Frazer  you'd  still  go  ahead  trying  to 
buck  them." 

"Hadn't  thought  about  it,  but  suppose  I  would." 

97 


,       THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"Afraid  it  might  be  that  way.  But  haven't  you  seen 
by  this  time  about  how  much  good  it  does  for  one  lone 
sophomore  to  try  and  run  the  faculty  ?"  It  was  the  coach 
talking  again,  but  the  gravely  nodding  mandarin-like 
heads  of  Howard  and  Ray  accompanied  him.  "Mind 
you,  I  don't  mean  to  disparage  you  personally,  but  you 
must  admit  that  you  can't  hardly  expect  to  boss  every- 
thing. Just  what  good  '11  it  do  to  go  on  shouting  for 
Frazer?  Quite  aside  from  the  question  of  whether  he  is 
likely  to  get  fired  or  not." 

"Well,"  grunted  Carl,  nervously  massaging  his  chin, 
"I  don't  know  as  it  will  do  any  direct  good — except  maybe 
waking  this  darn  conservative  college  up  a  little;  but 
it  does  make  me  so  dog-gone  sore " 

"Yes,  yes,  we  understand,  old  man,"  the  coach  said, 
"but  on  the  other  hand  here's  the  direct  good  of  sitting 
tight  and  playing  the  game.  I've  heard  you  speak  about 
Kipling.  Well,  you're  like  a  young  officer — a  subaltern  they 
call  it,  don't  they? — in  a  Kipling  story,  a  fellow  that's 
under  orders,  and  it's  part  of  his  game  to  play  hard  and 
keep  his  mouth  shut  and  to  not  criticize  his  superior 
officers,  ain't  it?" 

"Oh,  I  suppose  so,  but " 

"Well,  it's  just  the  same  with  you.  Can't  you  see 
that?  Think  it  over.  What  would  you  think  of  a 
lieutenant  that  tried  to  boss  all  the  generals?  Just  same 
thing.  .  .  .  Besides,  if  you  sit  tight,  you  can  make  the 
team  this  year,  I  can  practically  promise  you  that.  Do 
understand  this  now;  it  isn't  a  bribe;  we  want  you 
to  be  able  to  play  and  do  something  for  old  Plato  in  a 
real  way  —  in  athletics.  But  you  most  certainly  can't 
make  the  team  if  you're  going  to  be  a  disorganizer." 

"All  we  want  you  to  do,"  put  in  Ray  Cowles,  "is  not 
to  make  a  public  spectacle  of  yourself — as  I'm  afraid 
you've  been  doing.  Admire  Frazer  all  you  want  to,  and 
talk  about  him  to  your  own  bunch,  and  don't  back  down 
on  your  own  opinions,  only  don't  think  you've  got  to  go 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

round  yelling  about  him.  People  get  a  false  idea  of  you. 
I  hate  to  have  to  tell  you  this,  but  several  of  the  fellows, 
even  in  Omega  Chi,  have  spoken  about  you,  and  wondered 
if  you  really  were  a  regular  crank.  'Of  course  he  isn't, 
you  poor  cheese/  I  tell  'em,  but  I  can't  be  around  to 
answer  every  one  all  the  time,  and  you  can't  lick  the  whole 
college;  that  ain't  the  way  the  world  does  things.  You 
don't  know  what  a  bad  impression  you  make  when  you're 
too  brash.  See  how  I  mean?" 

As  the  council  of  seers  rose,  Carl  timidly  said  to  Ray, 
"Straight,  now,  have  quite  a  lot  of  the  fellows  been  saying 
I  was  a  goat?" 

"Good  many,  I'm  afraid.  All  talking  about  you.  .  .  . 
It's  up  to  you.  All  you  got  to  do  is  not  think  you  know 
it  all,  and  keep  still.  Keep  still  till  you  understand  the 
faculty's  difficulties  just  a  little  better.  Savvy?  Don't 
that  sound  fairly  reasonable?" 


CHAPTER  X 

THEY  were  gone.  Carl  was  full  of  the  nauseating 
shame  which  a  matter-of-fact  man,  who  supposes 
that  he  is  never  pilloried,  knows  when  a  conscientious 
friend  informs  him  that  he  has  been  observed,  criticized; 
that  his  enthusiasms  have  been  regarded  as  eccentrici- 
ties; his  affectionate  approaches,  toward  friendship  as  im- 
pertinence. 

There  seemed  to  be  hundreds  of  people  in  the  room, 
nudging  one  another,  waiting  agape  for  him  to  do  some- 
thing idiotic;  a  well-advertised  fool  on  parade.  He 
stalked  about,  now  shamefaced,  now  bursting  out  with  a 
belligerent,  "Aw,  rats!  I'll  show  'em!"  now  plaintively  be- 
seeching, "I  don't  suppose  I  am  helping  Frazer,  but  it 
makes  me  so  darn  sore  when  nobody  stands  up  for  him 
— and  he  teaches  stuff  they  need  so  much  here.  Gee!  I'm 
coming  to  think  this  is  a  pretty  rough-neck  college.  He's 
the  first  teacher  I  ever  got  anything  out  of — and— 
Oh,  hang  it!  what  'd  I  have  to  get  mixed  up  in  all  this 
for,  when  I  was  getting  along  so  good  ?  And  if  it  isn't 
going  to  help  him " 

His  right  hand  became  conscious  of  Gertie's  letter 
crumpled  in  his  pocket.  As  turning  the  letter  over  and 
over  gave  him  surprisingly  small  knowledge  of  its  contents, 
he  opened  it: 

DEAR  CARL, — You  are  just  silly  to  tease  me  about  any  bank 
clerk.  I  don't  like  him  any  more  at  all  and  he  can  go  with 
Linda  all  he  likes,  much  I  care! 

We  are  enjoying  good  health,  though  it  is  getting  quite  cold 
now  and  we  have  the  furnace  running  now  and  it  feels  pretty 

IOQ 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

good  to  have  it.  We  had  such  a  good  time  at  Adelaide's  party 
she  wore  such  a  pretty  dress.  She  flirted  terribly  with  Joe 
Jordan  though  of  course  you'll  call  me  a  cat  for  telling  you  be- 
cause you  like  her  so  much  better  than  me  &  all. 

Oh  I  haven't  told  you  the  news  yet  Joe  has  accepted  a  position 
at  St.  Hilary  in  the  mill  there. 

I  have  some  pretty  new  things  for  my  room,  a  beautiful  hand- 
painted  picture.  Before  Joe  goes  there  is  going  to  be  a  party 
for  him  at  Semina's.  I  wish  you  could  come  I  suppose  you  have 
learned  to  dance  well,  of  course  you  go  to  lots  of  parties  at 
Plato  with  all  the  pretty  girls  &  forget  all  about  me. 

I  wish  I  was  in  Minneapolis  it  is  pretty  dull  here,  &  such 
good  talks  you  and  me  had  didn't  we! 

Oh  Carl  dear  Ray  writes  us  you  are  sticking  up  for  that  crazy 
Professor  Frazer.  I  know  it  must  take  lots  of  courage  &  I 
admire  you  lots  for  it  even  if  Ray  doesn't  but  oh  Carl  dear  if 
you  can't  do  any  good  by  it  I  hope  you  won't  get  everybody 
talking  about  you  without  its  doing  any  good,  will  you,  Carl? 

I  do  so  expect  you  to  succeed  wonderfully  &  I  hope  you  won't 
blast  your  career  even  to  stand  up  for  folks  when  it's  too  late 
&  won't  do  any  good. 

We  all  expect  so  much  of  you — we  are  waiting!  You  are 
our  knight  &  you  aren't  going  to  forget  to  keep  your  armor 
bright,  nor  forget,  Yours  as  ever, 

GERTIE. 

"Mmm!"  remarked  Carl.  "DunW  about  this  knight- 
and-armor  business.  I'd  look  swell,  I  would,  with  a  wash- 
boiler  and  a  few  more  tons  of  junk  on.  Mmm!  'Expect 

you  to  succeed  wonderfully '     Oh,  I  don't  suppose  I 

had  ought  to  disappoint  'em.  Don't  see  where  I  can  help 
Frazer,  anyway.  Not  a  bit." 

The  Frazer  affair  seemed  very  far  from  him;  very 
hysterical. 

Two  of  the  Gang  ambled  in  with  noisy  proposals  in  re- 
gard to  a  game  of  poker,  penny  ante,  but  the  thought  of 
cards  bored  him.  Leaving  them  in  possession,  one  of 
them  smoking  the  Turk's  best  pipe,  which  the  Turk  had 
been  so  careless  as  to  leave  in  sight,  he  strolled  out  on 
the  street  and  over  to  the  campus. 

101 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

There  was  a  light  in  the  faculty-room  in  the  Academic 
Building,  yet  it  was  not  a  "first  and  third  Thursday," 
dates  on  which  the  faculty  regularly  met.  Therefore,  it 
was  a  special  meeting;  therefore 

Promptly,  without  making  any  plans,  Carl  ran  to 
the  back  of  the  building,  shinned  up  a  water-spout 
(humming  "Just  Before  the  Battle,  Mother"),  pried 
open  a  class-room  window  with  his  large  jack-knife,  of 
the  variety  technically  known  as  a  "toad-stabber" 
(changing  his  tune  to  "Onward,  Christian  Soldiers"), 
climbed  in,  tiptoed  through  the  room,  stopping  often  to 
listen,  felt  along  the  plaster  walls  to  find  the  door,  eased 
the  door  open,  calmly  sat  down  in  the  corridor,  pulled  off 
his  shoes,  said,  "Ouch,  it's  cold  on  the  feets!"  slipped 
into  another  class-room  in  the  front  of  the  building,  put 
on  his  shoes,  crawled  out  of  the  window,  walked  along  a 
limestone  ledge  one  foot  wide  to  a  window  of  the  faculty- 
room,  and  peeped  in. 

All  of  the  eleven  assistant  professors  and  full  professors, 
except  Frazer,  were  assembled,  with  President  S.  Alcott 
Wood  in  the  chair,  and  the  Greek  professor  addressing 
them,  referring  often  to  a  red-leather-covered  note-book. 

"Urn!  Making  a  report  on  Frazer's  lecture,"  said  Carl, 
clinging  precariously  to  the  rough  faces  of  the  stones.  A 
gust  swooped  around  the  corner  of  the  building.  He 
swayed,  gripped  the  stones  more  tightly,  and  looked  down. 
He  could  not  see  the  ground.  It  was  thirty-five  or  forty 
feet  down.  "Almost  fell,"  he  observed.  "Gosh!  my 
hands  are  chilly!"  As  he  peered  in  the  window  again  he 
saw  the  Greek  professor  point  directly  at  the  window, 
while  the  whole  gathering  startled,  turned,  stared.  A 
young  assistant  professor  ran  toward  the  door  of  the  room. 

"Going  to  cut  me  off.  Dog-gone  it,"  said  Carl. 
"They'll  wait  for  me  at  the  math.-room  window.  Hooray! 
Fve  started  something." 

He  carefully  moved  along  the  ledge  to  a  point  half-way 
between  windows  and  waited,  flat  against  the  wall. 

1 02 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Again  he  glanced  down  from  the  high,  windy,  narrow 
ledge.  "It  'd  be  a  long  drop.  .  .  .  My  hands  are  cold.  .  .  . 
I  could  slip.  Funny,  I  ain't  really  much  scared,  though. 
.  .  .  Say!  Where'd  I  do  just  this  before?  Oh  yes!"  He 
saw  himself  as  little  Carl,  lost  with  Gertie  in  the  woods, 
caught  by  Bone  Stillman  at  the  window.  He  laughed  out 
as  he  compared  the  bristly  virile  face  of  Bone  with  the 
pasty  face  of  the  young  professor.  "Seems  almost  as 
though  I  was  back  there  doing  the  same  thing  right  over. 
Funny.  But  Pm  not  quite  as  scared  as  I  was  then.  Guess 
I'm  growing  up.  Hel-lo!  here's  our  cunning  Spanish 
Inquisition  rubbering  out  of  the  next  window." 

The  window  of  the  mathematics  class-room,  next  to 
the  faculty-room,  had  opened.  The  young  professor 
who  was  pursuing  Carl  peppered  the  night  with  violent 
words  delivered  in  a  rather  pedagogic  voice.  "Well,  sir! 
We  have  you!  You  might  as  well  come  and  give  yourself 
up!" 

Carl  was  silent. 

The  voice  said,  conversationally:  "He's  staying  out 
there.  I'll  see  who  it  is."  Carl  half  made  out  a  head 
thrusting  itself  from  the  window,  then  heard,  in  sotto  voce, 
"I  can't  see  him."  Loudly  again,  the  pursuing  professor 
yapped:  "Ah,  I  see  you.  You're  merely  wasting  time, 
sir.  You  might  just  as  well  come  here  now.  I  shall  let 
you  stay  there  till  you  do."  Softly:  "Hurry  back  into 
the  faculty-room  and  see  if  you  can  get  him  from  that  side. 
Bet  it's  one  of  the  sneaking  Frazer  faction." 

Carl  said  nothing;  did  not  budge.  He  peeped  at  the 
ledge  above  him.  It  was  too  far  for  him  to  reach  it. 
He  tried  to  discern  the  mass  of  the  ground  in  the  confusing 
darkness  below.  It  seemed  miles  down.  He  did  not 
know  what  to  do.  He  was  lone  as  a  mateless  hawk,  there 
on  the  ledge,  against  the  wall  whose  stones  were  pinchingly 
cold  to  the  small  of  his  back  and  his  spread-eagled  arms. 
He  swayed  slightly;  realized  with  trembling  nausea  what 
would  happen  if  he  swayed  too  much. ...  He  remembered 

103 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

that  there  was  pavement  below  him.  But  he  did  not 
think  about  giving  himself  up. 

From  the  mathematics-room  window  came:  "Watch 
him.  I'm  going  out  after  him." 

The  young  professor's  shoulders  slid  out  of  the  window. 
Carl  carefully  turned  his  head  and  found  that  now  a 
form  was  leaning  from  the  faculty-room  window  as  well. 

"Got  me  on  both  sides.  Darn  it!  Well,  when  they 
haul  me  up  on  the  carpet  I'll  have  the  pleasure  of  telling 
them  what  I  think  of  them." 

The  young  professor  had  started  to  edge  along  the 
ledge.  He  was  coming  very  slowly.  He  stopped  and 
complained  to  some  one  back  in  the  mathematics-room, 
"This  beastly  ledge  is  icy,  I'm  afraid." 

Carl  piped:   "Look  out!     Y're  slipping!" 

In  a  panic  the  professor  slid  back,  into  the  window. 
As  his  heels  disappeared  through  it,  Carl  dashed  by  the 
window,  running  sidewise  along  the  ledge.  While  the 
professor  was  cautiously  risking  his  head  in  the  night  air 
outside  the  window  again,  gazing  to  the  left,  where,  he 
had  reason  to  suppose,  Carl  would  have  the  decency  to 
remain,  Carl  was  rapidly  worming  to  the  right.  He 
reached  the  corner  of  the  building,  felt  for  the  tin  water- 
pipe,  and  slid  down  it,  with  his  coat-tail  protecting  his 
hands.  Half-way  down,  the  cloth  slipped  and  his  hand 
was  burnt  against  the  corrugated  tin.  "Consid'able 
slide,"  he  murmured  as  he  struck  the  ground  and  blew 
softly  on  his  raw  palm. 

He  walked  away — not  at  all  like  a  melodramatic  hero  of 
a  slide-by-night,  but  like  a  matter-of-fact  young  man 
going  to  see  some  one  about  business  of  no  great  impor- 
tance. He  abstractedly  brushed  his  left  sleeve  or  his 
waistcoat,  now  and  then,  as  though  he  wanted  to  appear 
neat. 

He  tramped  into  the  telephone-booth  of  the  corner 
drug-store,  called  up  Professor  Frazer: 

"Hello?  Professor  Frazer?  .  .  .  This  is k  one  of  your 

104 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

students  in  modern  drama.  I've  just  learned — I  hap- 
pened to  be  up  in  the  Academic  Building  and  I  happened 
to  find  out  that  Professor  Drood  is  making  a  report  to  the 
faculty — special  meeting! — about  your  last  lecture.  I've 
got  a  hunch  he's  going  to  slam  you.  I  don't  want  to  butt 
in,  but  I'm  awfully  worried;  I  thought  perhaps  you  ought 

to  know.  .  .  .  Who?  Oh,  I'm  just  one  of  your  students 

You're  welcome.  Oh,  say,  Professor,  g-good  luck.  G'-by." 

Immediately,  without  even  the  excuse  that  some  evil 
mind  in  the  Gang  had  suggested  it,  he  prowled  out  to 
the  Greek  professor's  house  and  tied  both  the  front  and 
back  gates.  Now  the  fence  of  that  yard  was  high  and 
strong  and  provided  with  sharp  pickets;  and  the  pro- 
fessor was  short  and  dignified.  Carl  regretted  that  he 
could  not  wait  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  professor 
fumble  with  the  knots  and  climb  the  fence.  But  he  had 
another  errand. 

He  walked  to  the  house  of  Professor  Frazer.  He  stood 
on  the  walk  before  it.  His  shoulders  straightened,  his 
heels  snapped  together,  and  he  raised  his  arm  in  a  formal 
salute. 

He  had  saluted  the  gentleness  of  Henry  Frazer.  He  had 
saluted  his  own  soul.  He  cried:  "I  will  stick  by  him,  as 
long  as  the  Turk  or  any  of  'em.  I  won't  let  Omega  Chi 
and  the  coach  scare  me — not  the  whole  caboodle  of  them. 
I Oh,  I  don't  think  they  can  scare  me.  .  .  ." 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  students  of  Plato  were  required  to  attend  chapel 
every  morning.  President  S.  Alcott  Wood  earnest- 
ly gave  out  two  hymns,  and  between  them  informed  the 
Almighty  of  the  more  important  news  events  of  the  past 
twenty-four  hours,  with  a  worried  advisory  manner  which 
indicated  that  he  felt  something  should  be  done  about 
them  at  once. 

President  Wood  was  an  honest,  anxious  body,  something 
like  a  small,  learned,  Scotch  linen-draper.  He  was  given 
to  being  worried  and  advisory  and  to  sitting  up  till  mid- 
night in  his  unventilated  library,  grinding  at  the  task  of 
putting  new  wrong  meanings  into  perfectly  obvious  state- 
ments in  the  Bible.  He  was  a  series  of  circles — round 
head  with  smooth  gray  hair  that  hung  in  a  bang  over  his 
round  forehead;  round  face  with  round  red  cheeks;  ab- 
surdly heavy  gray  mustache  that  almost  made  a  circle 
about  his  puerile  mouth;  round  button  of  a  nose;  round 
heavy  shoulders;  round  little  stomach  in  a  gray  sack- 
suit;  round  dumplings  of  feet  in  congress  shoes  that  were 
never  quite  fresh-blacked  or  quite  dusty.  A  harassed, 
honorable,  studious,  ignorant,  humorless,  joke-popping, 
genuinely  conscientious  thumb  of  a  man.  His  prayers 
were  long  and  intimate. 

After  the  second  hymn  he  would  announce  the  coming 
social  events— class  prayer-meetings  and  lantern-slide 
lectures  by  missionaries.  During  the  prayer  and  hymns 
most  of  the  students  hastily  prepared  for  first-hour  classes, 
with  lists  of  dates  inside  their  hymn-books;  or  they  read 
tight-folded  copies  of  the  Minneapolis  Journal  or  Tribune. 

106 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

But  when  the  announcements  began  all  Plato  College  sat 
up  to  attention,  for  Prexy  Wood  was  very  likely  to  com- 
ment with  pedantic  sarcasm  on  student  peccadillos,  on 
cards  and  V-neck  gowns  and  the  unforgivable  crime  of 
smoking. 

As  he  crawled  to  the  bare,  unsympathetic  chapel,  the 
morning  after  spying  on  the  faculty-room,  Carl  looked 
restlessly  to  the  open  fields,  sniffed  at  the  scent  of  burning 
leaves,  watched  a  thin  stream  of  blackbirds  in  the  windy 
sky.  He  sat  on  the  edge  of  a  pew,  nervously  jiggling  his 
crossed  legs. 

During  the  prayer  and  hymns  a  spontaneously  born 
rumor  that  there  would  be  something  sensational  in 
President  Wood's  announcements  went  through  the 
student  body.  The  president,  as  he  gave  out  the  hymns, 
did  not  look  at  the  students,  but  sadly  smoothed  the  neat 
green  cloth  on  the  reading-stand.  His  prayer,  timid, 
sincere,  was  for  guidance  to  comprehend  the  will  of  the 
Lord. 

Carl  felt  sorry  for  him.  "Poor' man's  fussed.  Ought 
to  be!  I'd  be,  too,  if  I  tried  to  stop  a  ten-inch  gun  like 
Frazer.  .  .  .  He's  singing  hard.  .  .  .  Announcements,  now. 
.  .  .  What's  he  waiting  for?  Jiminy!  I  wish  he'd  spring  it 
and  get  it  over.  .  .  .  Suppose  he  said  something  about  last 
night — me 

President  Wood  stood  silent.  His  glance  drifted  from 
row  to  row  of  students.  They  moved  uneasily.  Then 
his  dry,  precise  voice  declaimed: 

"My  friends,  I  have  an  unpleasant  duty  to  perform  this 
morning,  but  I  have  sought  guidance  in  prayer,  and  I 
hope " 

Carl  was  agonizing:  "He  does  know  it's  me!  He'll 
ball  me  out  and  fire  me  publicly!  ...  Sit  tight,  Ericson; 
hold  y'  nerve;  think  of  good  old  Turk."  Carl  was  not  a 
hero.  He  was  frightened.  In  a  moment  now  all  the  eyes 
in  the  room  would  be  unwinkingly  focused  on  him.  He 
8  107 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

hated  this  place  of  crowding,  curious  young  people  and 
drab  text-hung  walls.  In  the  last  row  he  noted  the  pew 
in  which  Professor  Frazer  sat  (infrequently).  He  could 
fancy  Frazer  there,  pale  and  stern.  "I'm  glad  I  spied  on 
'em.  Might  have  been  able  to  put  Frazer  wise  to  some- 
thing definite  if  I  could  just  have  overheard  'em." 

President  Wood  was  mincing  on: 

" and  so,  my  friends,  I  hope  that  in  devotion  to  the 

ideals  of  the  Baptist  Church  we  shall  strive  ever  onward 
and  upward  in  even  our  smallest  daily  concerns,  per  aspera 
ad  astra,  not  in  a  spirit  of  materialism  and  modern  unrest, 
but  in  a  spirit  of  duty. 

"I  need  not  tell  you  that  there  has  been  a  great  deal  of 
rumor  about  the  so-called  '  faculty  dissensions.'  But  let 
me  earnestly  beseech  you  to  give  me  your  closest  atten- 
tion when  I  assure  you  that  there  have  been  no  faculty 
dissensions.  It  is  true  that  we  have  found  certain  teach- 
ings rather  out  of  harmony  with  the  ideals  of  Plato  Col- 
lege. The  Word  of  God  in  the  Bible  was  good  enough 
for  our  fathers  who  fought  to  defend  this  great  land,  and 
the  Bible  is  still  good  enough  for  us,  I  guess — and  I  can- 
not find  anything  in  the  Bible  about  such  doctrines  as 
socialism  and  anarchism  and  evolution.  Probably  most 
of  you  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  not  have  wasted  any 
time  on  this  theory  called  Devolution/  If  you  don't 
know  anything  about  it  you  have  not  lost  anything. 
Absurd  as  it  may  seem,  evolution  says  that  we  are  all 
descended  from  monkeys!  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
Bible  teaches  us  that  we  are  the  children  of  God.  If 
you  prefer  to  be  the  children  of  monkeys  rather  than  of 
God,  well,  all  I  can  say  is,  I  don't!  [Laughter.] 

"But  the  old  fellow  Satan  is  always  busy  going  to  and 
fro  even  in  colleges,  and  in  the  unrestrained,  overgrown, 
secularized  colleges  of  the  East  they  have  actually  been 
teaching  this  doctrine  openly  for  many  years.  Indeed, 
I  am  told  that  right  at  the  University  of  Chicago,  though 
it  is  a  Baptist  institution,  they  teach  this  same  silly 

108 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

twaddle  of  evolution,  and  I  cannot  advise  any  of  you  to 
go  there  for  graduate  work.  But  these  scientific  fellows 
that  are  too  wise  for  the  Bible  fall  into  the  pits  they 
themselves  have  digged,  sooner  or  later,  and  they  have 
been  so  smart  in  discovering  new  things  about  evolution 
that  they  have  contradicted  almost  everything  that  Dar- 
win, who  was  the  high  priest  of  this  abominable  cult, 
first  taught,  and  they  have  turned  the  whole  theory  into 
a  hodge-podge  of  contradictions  from  which  even  they 
themselves  are  now  turning  in  disgust.  Indeed,  I  am 
told  that  Darwin's  own  son  has  come  out  and  admitted 
that  there  is  nothing  to  this  evolution.  Well,  we  could 
have  told  him  that  all  along,  and  told  his  father,  and  saved 
all  their  time,  for  now  they  are  all  coming  right  back  to 
the  Bible.  We  could  have  told  them  in  the  first  place 
that  the  Word  of  God  definitely  explains  the  origin  of 
man,  and  that  anybody  who  tried  to  find  out  whether  we 
were  descended  from  monkeys  was  just  about  as  wise  as 
the  man  who  tried  to  make  a  silk  purse  out  of  a  sow's 
ear." 

Carl  was  settled  down  in  his  pew,  safe. 

President  Wood  was  in  his  stride.  "All  this  evolu- 
tionary fad  becomes  ridiculous,  of  course,  when  a  mind 
that  is  properly  trained  in  clear  thinking  by  the  diligent 
perusal  of  the  classics  strips  it  of  its  pseudo-scientific 
rags  and  shows  it  straight  out  from  the  shoulder,  in  the 
fire  of  common  sense  and  sound  religion.  And  here  is  the 
point  of  my  disquisition: 

"On  this  selfsame  evolution,  this  bombast  of  the  self- 
pushing  scientists,  are  founded  all  such  un-Christian  and 
un-American  doctrines  as  socialism  and  anarchism  and  the 
lusts  of  feminism,  with  all  their  followers,  such  as  Shaw 
and  the  fellow  who  tried  to  shoot  Mr.  Frick,  and  all  the 
other  atheists  of  the  stripe  that  think  so  well  of  themselves 
that  they  are  quite  willing  to  overthrow  the  grand  old 
institutions  that  our  forefathers  founded  on  the  Con- 
stitution; and  they  want  to  set  up  instead — oh,  they're 

109 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

quite  willing  to  tell  us  how  to  run  the  government!  They 
want  to  set  up  a  state  in  which  all  of  us  who  are  honest 
enough  to  do  a  day's  work  shall  support  the  lazy  rascals 
who  aren't.  Yet  they  are  very  clever  men.  They  can 
pull  the  wool  over  your  eyes  and  persuade  you — if  you  let 
them — that  a  universal  willingness  to  let  the  other  fellow 
do  the  worlc  while  you  paint  pictures  of  flowers  and  write 
novels  about  the  abominations  of  Babylon  is  going  to 
evolute  a  superior  race!  Well,  when  you  think  they  are 
clever,  this  Shaw  and  this  fellow  Wells  and  all  of  them  that 
copy  Robert  G.  Ingersoll,  just  remember  that  the  cleverest 
fellow  of  them  all  is  the  old  Satan,  and  that  he's  been  ad- 
vocating just  such  lazy  doctrines  ever  since  he  stirred  up 
rebellion  and  discontent  in  the  Garden  of  Eden! 

"If  these  things  are  so,  then  the  teachings  of  Professor 
Henry  Frazer,  however  sincere  he  is,  are  not  in  accordance 
with  the  stand  which  we  have  taken  here  at  Plato.  My 
friends,  I  want  you  all  to  understand  me.  Certain  young 
students  of  Plato  appear  to  have  felt  that  the  faculty 
have  not  appreciated  Professor  Frazer.  One  of  these 
students,  I  presume  it  was  one  of  them,  went  so  far  as  to 
attempt  to  spy  on  faculty  meeting  last  night.  Who  that 
man  is  I  have  means  of  finding  out  at  any  time.  But  I 
do  not  wish  to.  For  I  cannot  believe  that  he  realized  how 
dishonest  was  such  sneaking. 

"I  wish  to  assure  the  malcontents  that  I  yield  to  no 
one  in  my  admiration  of  Professor  Frazer's  eloquence  and 
learning  in  certain  subjects.  Only,  we  have  not  found 
his  doctrines  quite  consistent  with  what  we  are  trying  to 
do.  They  may  be  a  lot  more  smart  and  new-fangled  than 
what  we  have  out  here  in  Minnesota,  and  we  may  be  a 
lot  of  old  fogies,  but  we  are  not  narrow,  and  we  wish  to 
give  him  just  as  much  right  of  free  speech — we  wish — 
there  is — uh — no  slightest — uh — desire,  in  fact,  to  impose 
any  authority  on  any  one.  But  against  any  perversive 
doctrine  we  must  in  all  honesty  take  a  firm  stand. 

"We  carefully  explained  this  to  Professor  Frazer,  and 

no 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

permit  me  to  inform  those  young  men  who  have  taken  it 
upon  themselves  to  be  his  champions,  that  they  would 
do  well  to  follow  his  example!  For  he  quite  agrees  with 
us  as  to  the  need  of  keeping  the  Plato  College  doctrine 
consistent.  In  fact,  he  offered  his  resignation,  which  we 
reluctantly  accepted,  very,  very  reluctantly.  It  will 
take  effect  the  first  of  the  month,  and,  owing  to  illness  in 
his  family,  he  will  not  be  giving  any  lectures  before  then. 
Students  in  his  classes,  by  the  way,  are  requested  to  report 
to  the  dean  for  other  assignments.  .  .  .  And  so  you  see  how 
little  there  is  to  the  cowardly  rumors  about  'faculty 
dissensions'!" 

"Liar,  liar!  Dear  God,  they've  smothered  that  kind, 
straight  Frazer,"  Carl  was  groaning. 

"Now,  my  friends,  I  trust  you  understand  our  position, 
and— uh " 

President  Wood  drew  a  breath,  slapped  the  reading- 
stand,  and  piped,  angrily: 

"We  have  every  desire  to  permit  complete  freedom 
of  thought  and  speech  among  the  students  of  Plato, 
but  on  my  word,  when  it  comes  to  a  pass  where  a  few 
students  can  cause  this  whole  great  institution  to  forget 
its  real  tasks  and  devote  all  its  time  to  quarreling  about  a 
fad  like  socialism,  then  it's  time  to  call  a  halt! 

"  If  there  are  any  students  here  who,  now  that  I  have 
explained  that  Professor  Frazer  leaves  us  of  his  own  free 
will,  still  persist  in  their  stubborn  desire  to  create  trouble, 
and  still  feel  that  the  faculty  have  not  treated  Professor 
Frazer  properly,  or  that  we  have  endeavored  to  coerce 
him,  then  let  them  stand  up,  right  here  and  now,  in  chapel. 
I  mean  it!  Let  them  stop  this  cowardly  running  to  and 
fro  and  secret  gossip.  Let  them  stand  right  up  before 
us,  in  token  of  protest,  here — and — now!  or  otherwise 
hold  their  peace!" 

So  well  trained  to  the  authority  of  schoolmasters  were 
the  students  of  Plato,  including  Carl  Ericson,  that  they 
sat  as  uncomfortable  as  though  they  were  individually 

in 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

accused  by  the  plump  pedant  who  was  weakly  glaring 
at  them,  his  round,  childish  hand  clutching  the  sloping 
edge  of  the  oak  reading-stand,  his  sack-coat  wrinkled  at 
the  shoulders  and  sagging  back  from  his  low  linen  collar. 
Carl  sighted  back  at  Frazer's  pew,  hoping  that  he  would 
miraculously  be  there  to  confront  the  dictator.  The 
pew  was  empty  as  before.  There  was  no  one  to  protest 
against  the  ousting  of  Frazer  for  saying  what  he  believed 
true. 

Then  Carl  was  agitated  to  find  that  Carl  Ericson,  a 
back-yard  boy,  was  going  to  rise  and  disturb  all  these 
learned  people.  He  was  frightened  again.  But  he  stood 
'up,  faced  the  president,  affectedly  folded  his  arms,  hastily 
unfolded  them  and  put  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  one  foot 
before  the  other,  one  shoulder  humped  a  little  higher 
than  the  other. 

The  whole  audience  was  staring  at  him.  He  did  not 
dare  peep  at  them,  but  he  could  hear  their  murmur  of 
amazement.  Now  that  he  was  up  he  rather  enjoyed  de- 
fying them. 

"Well,  young  man,  so  you  are  going  to  let  us  know  how 
to  run  Plato,"  teetered  the  president.  "I'm  sure  every- 
body will  feel  much  obliged  to  you." 

Carl  did  not  move.  He  was  aware  of  Genie  Linderbeck 
rising,  to  his  left.  No  one  else  was  up,  but,  with  Genie's 
frail  adherence,  Carl  suddenly  desired  to  rouse  every  one 
to  stand  for  Frazer  and  freedom.  He  glanced  over  at  the 
one  man  whom  he  could  always  trust  to  follow  him — 
the  Turk.  A  tiny  movement  of  Carl's  lips,  a  covert  up- 
toss  of  his  head,  warned  the  Turk  to  rise  now. 

The  Turk  moved,  started  to  rise,  slowly,  as  though  under 
force.  He  looked  rather  shamefaced.  He  uncrossed  his 
legs  and  put  his  hands  on  the  pew,  on  either  side  of  his 
legs. 

"Shame!"  trembled  a  girl's  voice  in  the  junior  section. 

"Sit  down!"  two  or  three  voices  of  men  softly  snarled, 
with  a  rustle  of  mob-muttering. 

112 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

The  Turk  hastily  crossed  his  legs  and  slumped  down  in 
his  seat.  Carl  frowned  at  him  imploringly,  then  angrily. 
He  felt  spiritually  naked  to  ask  support  so  publicly, 
but  he  had  to  get  the  Turk  up.  The  Turk  shook  his  head 
beseechingly.  Carl  could  fancy  him  grunting,  "Aw, 
thunder!  I'd  like  to  stand  up,  but  I  don't  want  to  be  a 
goat." 

Another  man  rose.  "I'll  be  darned!"  thought  Carl. 
It  was  the  one  man  who  would  be  expected  not  to  support 
the  heretic  Frazer — it  was  Carl's  rustic  ex-room-mate, 
Plain  Smith.  Genie  was  leaning  against  the  pew  in  front 
of  him,  but  Plain  Smith  bulked  more  immovable  than  Carl. 

No  one  joined  the  three.  All  through  the  chapel  was 
an  undertone  of  amazed  comment  and  a  constant  low 
hissing  of,  "Sssssit  down!" 

The  president,  facing  them,  looked  strained.  It  oc-' 
curred  to  Carl  that  S.  Alcott  Wood  had  his  side  of  the 
question.  He  argued  about  the  matter,  feeling  detached 
from  his  stolidly  defiant  body.  Then  he  cursed  the 
president  for  keeping  them  there.  He  wanted  to  sit  down.! 
He  wanted  to  cry  out.  .  .  . 

President  Wood  was  speaking.  "Is  there  any  one  else? 
Stand  up,  if  there  is.  No  one  else?  Very  well,  young 
men,  I  trust  that  you  are  now  satisfied  with  your  hero- 
ism, which  we  have  all  greatly  appreciated,  I  am  sure. 
[Laughter.]  Chapel  dismissed." 

Instantly  a  swirl  of  men  surrounded  Carl,  questioning: 
"What  j'  do  it  for?  Why  didn't  you  keep  still?" 

He  pushed  out  through  them.  He  sat  blind  through 
the  first-hour  quiz  in  physics,  with  the  whole  class  watch- 
ing him.  The  thought  of  the  Turk's  failure  to  rise  kept 
unhappy  vigil  in  his  mind.  The  same  sequence  of  re- 
flections ran  around  like  midnight  mice  in  the  wall: 

"Just  when  I  needed  him.  .  .  .  After  all  his  talk.  .  .  . 
And  us  so  chummy,  sitting  up  all  hours  last  night.  And 
then  the  Turk  throws  me  down.  .  .  .  When  he'd  said  so 
many  times  he  just  wanted  the  chance  to  show  how  strong 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

he  was  for  Frazer.  .  .  .  Damn  coward!  I'll  go  room  with 

Genie.  By  gosh Oh,  I  got  to  be  fair  to  the  Turk. 

I  don't  suppose  he  could  have  done  much  real  good 
standing  up.  Course  it  does  make  you  feel  kind  of  a  poor 

nut,  doing  it.  Genie  looked Yes,  by  the  Jim  Hill! 

there  you  are.  Poor  little  scrawny  Genie — oh  yes,  sure, 
it  was  up  to  him  to  stand  up.  He  wasn't  afraid.  And 
the  Turk,  the  big  stiff,  he  was  afraid  to.  ...  Just  when  I 
needed  him.  After  all  our  talk  about  Frazer,  sitting  up 
all  hours " 

Through  the  black  whirlpool  in  his  head  pierced  an 
irritated,  "Mr.  Ericson,  I  said!  Have  you  gone  to  sleep? 
I  understood  you  were  excellent  at  standing  up!  What 
is  your  explanation  of  the  phenomenon?"  The  professor 
of  physics  and  mathematics — the  same  who  had  pursued 
Carl  on  the  ledge — was  speaking  to  him. 

Carl  mumbled,  sullenly,  "Not  prepared."  The  class 
sniggered.  He  devoted  a  moment  to  hating  them,  as 
pariahs  hate,  then  through  his  mind  went  whirling  again, 
"Just  wait  till  I  see  the  Turk!" 


CHAPTER  XII 

A  NOTICE  from  the  president's  office,  commanding 
Carl's  instant  presence,  was  in  his  post-office  box. 
He  slouched  into  the  waiting-room  of  the  offices  of  the 
president  and  dean.  He  was  an  incarnate  desire  to  say 
exactly  what  he  thought  to  the  round,  woolly  President 
Wood. 

Plain  Albert  Smith  was  leaving  the  waiting-room.  He 
seized  Carl's  hand  with  his  plowman's  paw,  and,  "Good- 
by,  boy,"  he  growled.  There  was  nothing  gallant  about 
his  appearance — his  blue-flannel  shirt  dusty  with  white 
fuzz,  his  wrinkled  brick-red  neck,  the  oyster-like  ear  at 
which  he  kept  fumbling  with  a  seamy  finger-nail  of  his 
left  hand.  But  Carl's  salute  was  a  salute  to  the  new  king. 

"How  d'you  mean  'good-by,'  Al?" 

"I've  just  resigned  from  Plato,  Carl." 

"How'd  you  happen  to  do  that?  Did  they  summon 
you  here?" 

"No.  Just  resigned,"  said  Plain  Smith.  "One  time 
when  I  was  school-teaching  I  had  a  set-to  with  a  school 
committee  of  farmers  about  teaching  the  kids  a  little 
botany.  They  said  the  three  R's  were  enough.  I  won 
out,  but  I  swore  I'd  stand  up  for  any  teacher  that  tried 
to  be  honest  the  way  he  seen  it.  I  don't  agree  with 
Frazer  about  these  socialists  and  all — fellow  that's  worked 
at  the  plow  like  I  have  knows  a  man  wants  to  get  ahead 
for  his  woman  and  himself,  first  of  all,  and  let  the  walking- 
delegates  go  to  work,  too.  But  I  think  he's  honest,  all 
right,  and,  well,  I  stood  up,  and  that  means  losing  my 
scholarship.  They  won't  try  to  fire  me.  Guess  I'll  mosey 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

on  to  the  U.  of  M.  Can't  probably  live  there  as  cheap 
as  here,  but  a  cousin  of  mine  owns  a  big  shoe-store  and 
maybe  I  can  get  a  job  with  him.  .  .  .  Boy,  you  were  plucky 
to  get  up.  .  .  .  Glad  we've  got  each  other,  finally.  I  feel  as 
though  you'd  freed  me  from  something.  God  bless  you." 

To  the  dean's  assistant,  in  the  waiting-room,  Carl 
grandly  stated:  "Ericson,  1908.  I'm  to  see  the  presi- 
dent." 

"It's  been  arranged  you're  to  see  the  dean  instead.  Sit 
down.  Dean  's  engaged  just  now." 

Carl  was  kept  waiting  for  a  half-hour.  He  did  not 
like  the  transference  to  the  dean,  who  was  no  anxious 
old  lamb  like  S.  Alcott  Wood,  but  a  young  collegiate 
climber,  with  a  clipped  mustache,  a  gold  eye-glass  chain 
over  one  ear,  a  curt  voice,  many  facts,  a  spurious  appre- 
ciation of  music,  and  no  mellowness.  He  was  a  graduate 
of  the  University  of  Chicago,  and  aggressively  proud  of  it. 
He  had  "earned  his  way  through  college,"  which  all 
tradition  and  all  fiction  pronounce  the  perfect  manner 
of  acquiring  a  noble  independence  and  financial  ability. 
Indeed,  the  blessing  of  early  poverty  is  in  general  praised 
as  the  perfect  training  for  acquiring  enough  wealth  to 
save  one's  own  children  from  the  curse  of  early  poverty. 
It  would  be  safer  to  malign  George  Washington  and  the 
Boy  Scouts,  professional  baseball  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A., 
than  to  suggest  that  working  one's  way  through  college 
is  not  necessarily  manlier  than  playing  and  dreaming  and 
reading  one's  way  through. 

Diffidently,  without  generalizing,  the  historian  reports 
this  fact  about  the  dean;  he  had  lost  the  graciousness 
of  his  rustic  clergyman  father  and  developed  an  itchingly 
bustling  manner,  a  tremendous  readiness  for  taking  charge 
of  everything  in  sight,  by  acquiring  during  his  under- 
graduate days  a  mastery  of  all  the  petty  ways  of  earning 
money,  such  as  charging  meek  and  stupid  wealthy  students 
too  much  for  private  tutoring,  and  bullying  his  class- 
mates into  patronizing  the  laundry  whose  agent  he  was. 

116 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

.  .  .  The  dean  stuck  his  little  finger  far  out  into  the  air 
when  drinking  from  a  cup,  and  liked  to  be  taken  for  a 
well-dressed  man  of  the  world. 

The  half-hour  of  waiting  gave  Carl  a  feeling  of  the 
power  of  the  authorities.  And  he  kept  seeing  Plain 
Smith  in  his  cousin's  shoe-store,  trying  to  "fit"  women's 
shoes  with  his  large  red  hands.  When  he  was  ordered 
to  "step  into  the  dean's  office,  now,"  he  stumbled  in, 
pulling  at  his  soft  felt  hat. 

With  his  back  to  Carl,  the  dean  was  writing  at  a  roll- 
top  desk.  The  burnished  top  of  his  narrow,  slightly 
bald  head  seemed  efficient  and  formidable.  Not  glancing 
up,  the  dean  snapped,  "Sit  down,  young  man." 

Carl  sat  down.  He  crumpled  his  hat  again.  He  stared 
at  a  framed  photograph,  and  moved  his  feet  about,  trying 
,to  keep  them  quiet. 

More  waiting. 

The  dean  inspected  Carl,  over  his  shoulder.  He  still 
held  his  pen.  The  fingers  of  his  left  hand  tapped  his 
desk-tablet.  He  turned  in  his  swivel-chair  deliberately, 
as  though  he  was  now  ready  to  settle  everything  per- 
manently. 

"Well,  young  man,  are  you  prepared  to  apologize  to  the 
president  and  faculty?" 

"Apologize?  What  for?  The  president  said  those 
that  wanted  to  protest " 

"Now  we  won't  have  any  blustering,  if  you  please, 
Ericson.  I  haven't  the  slightest  doubt  that  you  are 
prepared  to  give  an  exhibition  of  martyrdom.  That  is 
why  I  asked  the  privilege  of  taking  care  of  you,  instead 
of  permitting  you  to  distress  President  Wood  any  further. 
We  will  drop  all  this  posing,  if  you  don't  mind.  I  assure 
you  that  it  doesn't  make " 

((  T  » 

' — • — the  slightest  impression  on  me,  Ericson.     Let's 
get  right  down  to  business.     You  know  perfectly  well 

that  you  have  stirred  up  all  the  trouble  you " 

117 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 


" could  in  regard  to  Mr.  Frazer.  And  I  think,  I 

really  think,  that  we  shall  either  have  to  have  your  written 
apology  and  your  promise  to  think  a  little  more  before 
you  talk,  hereafter,  or  else  we  shall  have  to  request  your 
resignation  from  college.  I  am  sorry  that  we  apparently 
can't  run  this  college  to  suit  you,  Ericson,  but  as  we  can't, 
why,  I'm  afraid  we  shall  have  to  ask  you  not  to  increase 
our  inefficiency  by  making  all  the  trouble  you,  can.  Wait 
now;  let's  not  have  any  melodrama!  You  may  as  well 
pick  up  that  hat  again.  It  doesn't  seem  to  impress  me 
much  when  you  throw  it  down,  though  doubtless  it  was 
ver-ee  dramatically  done,  oh  yes,  indeed,  ver-ee  dramatic. 
See  here.  I  know  you,  and  I  know  your  type,  my  young 
friend,  and  I  haven't " 

"Look  here.  Why  do  I  get  picked  out  as  the  goat,  the 
one  to  apologize?  Because  I  stood  up  first?  When 
Prexy  said  to?" 

"Oh,  not  at  all.  Say  it's  because  you  quite  shame- 
lessly made  motions  at  others  while  you  stood  there,  and 
did  your  best  to  disaffect  men  who  hadn't  the  least  de- 
sire to  join  in  your  trouble-making. . .  .Now  I'm  very  busy, 
young  man,  and  I  think  this  is  all  the  time  I  shall  waste 
on  you.  I  shall  expect  to  find  your  written " 

"Say,  honest,  dean,"  Carl  suddenly  laughed,  "may 
I  say  just  one  thing  before  I  get  thrown  out?" 

"Certainly.  We  have  every  desire  to  deal  justly  with 
you,  and  to  always  give — always  to  give  you  every 
opportunity " 

"Well,  I  just  wanted  to  say,  in  case  I  resign  and  don't 
see  you  again,  that  I  admire  you  for  your  nerve.  I  wish 
I  could  get  over  feeling  like  a  sophomore  talking  to  a  dean, 
and  then  I  could  tell  you  I  hadn't  supposed  there  was 
anybody  could  talk  to  me  the  way  you  have  and  get  away 
with  it.  I'd  always  thought  I'd  punch  their  head  off, 
and  here  you've  had  me  completely  buffaloed.  It's 
wonderful!  Honestly,  it  never  struck  me  till  just  this 

118 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

second  that  there  isn't  any  law  that  compels  me  to  sit  here 
and  take  all  this.  You  had  me  completely  hypnotized." 

"You  know  I  might  retort  truthfully  and  say  I  am  not 
accustomed  to  have  students  address  me  in  quite  this 
manner.  I'm  glad,  however,  to  find  that  you  are  sensible 
enough  not  to  make  an  amusing  show  of  yourself  by 
imagining  that  you  are  making  a*  noble  fight  for  freedom. 
By  decision  of  the  president  and  myself  I  am  compelled 
to  give  you  this  one  chance  only.  Unless  I  find  your 
apology  in  my  letter-box  here  by  five  this  evening  I  shall 
have  to  suspend  you  or  bring  you  up  before  the  faculty 
for  dismissal.  But,  my  boy,  I  feel  that  perhaps,  for  all 
your  mistaken  notions,  you  do  have  a  certain  amount 
of  courage,  and  I  want  to  say  a  word " 

The  dean  did  say  a  word;  in  fact  he  said  a  large  number 
of  admirable  words,  regarding  the  effect  of  Carl's  possible 
dismissal  on  his  friends,  his  family,  and,  with  an  almost 
tearful  climax,  on  his  mother. 

"Now  go  and  think  it  over;  pray  over  it,  unselfishly, 
my  boy,  and  let  me  hear  from  you  before  five." 

Only 

The  reason  why  Carl  did  visualize  his  mother,  the 
reason  why  the  Ericson  kitchen  became  so  clear  to  him 
that  he  saw  his  tired-faced  mother  reaching  up  to  wind 
the  alarm-clock  that  stood  beside  the  ball  of  odd  string 
on  the  shelf  above  the  water-pail,  the  reason  why  he  felt 
caved-in  at  the  stomach,  was  that  he  knew  he  was  going 
to  leave  Plato,  and  did  not  know  where  in  the  world  he 
was  going. 

A  time  of  quick  action;  of  bursting  the  bonds  even  of 
friendship.  He  walked  quietly  into  Genie  Linderbeck's 
neat  room,  with  its  rose-hued  comforter  on  a  narrow  brass 
bed,  passe-partouted  Copley  prints,  and  a  small  oak  table 
with  immaculate  green  desk-blotter,  and  said  good-by. 
.  .  .  His  hidden  apprehension,  the  cold,  empty  feeling  of 
his  stomach>  the  nervous  intensity  of  his  motions,  told 

119 


THE    TRAIL   OF    THE    HAWK 

him  that  he  was  already  on  the  long  trail  that  leads  to 
fortune  and  Bowery  lodging-houses  and  death  and  hap- 
piness. Even  while  he  was  warning  himself  that  he  must 
not  go,  that  he  owed  it  to  his  "folks"  to  apologize  and 
stay,  he  was  stumbling  into  the  bank  and  drawing  out 
his  ninety-two  dollars.  It  seemed  a  great  sum.  While 
waiting  for  it  he  did  sums  on  the  back  of  a  deposit-slip: 
i 

92.00    out  of  bank 

2.27     in  pocket 
about         .10     at  room 


tot.        94.37 

Owe  Tailor  1.45 

"    Turk  .25 

To  Mpls.  3.05 

To  Chi.  probably  15  to  18.00 

To  N.  Y.  20  to  30.00 

To  Europe  (steerage)  40.00 

Total  (about)  92-75 would  take  me  to  Europe! 

"Golly!  I  could  go  to  Europe,  to  Europe!  now,  if  I 
wanted  to,  and  have  maybe  two  plunks  over,  for  grub  on 
the  railroad.  But  I'd  have  to  allow  something  for  tips, 
I  guess.  Maybe  it  wouldn't  be  as  much  as  forty  dollars 

for  steerage.  Ought  to  allow Oh,  thunder!  I've 

got  enough  to  make  a  mighty  good  start  seeing  the  world, 
anyway." 

On  the  street  a  boy  was  selling  extras  of  the  Plato 
Weekly  Times,  with  the  heading: 

PRESIDENT  CRUSHES  STUDENT 
REBELLION 

Plato  Demonstration  for  Anarchist  Handled 
Without  Gloves 

J20 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Carl  read  that  he  and  two  other  students,  "who  are 
alleged  to  have  been  concerned  in  several  student  pranks," 
had  attempted  to  break  up  a  chapel  meeting,  but  had 
been  put  to  shame  by  the  famous  administrator,  S.  Alcott 
Wood.  He  had  never  seen  his  name  in  the  press,  ex- 
cept some  three  times  in  the  local  items  of  the  Joralemon 
Dynamite.  It  looked  so  intimidatingly  public  that  he 
tried  to  forget  it  was  there.  He  chuckled  when  he 
thought  of  Plain  Smith  and  Genie  Linderbeck  as  "con- 
cerned in  student  pranks/'  But  he  was  growing  angry. 
He  considered  staying  and  fighting  his  opponents  to  the 
end.  Then  he  told  himself  that  he  must  leave  Plato, 
after  having  announced  to  Genie  that  he  was  going.  .  .  . 
He  had  made  all  of  his  decision  except  the  actual  de- 
ciding. 

,  He  omitted  his  noonday  dinner  and  tramped  into  the 
country,  trying  to  plan  how  and  where  he  would  go. 
As  evening  came,  cloudy  and  chill  in  a  low  wooded  tract 
miles  north  of  Plato,  with  dead  boughs  keening  and  the 
uneasy  air  threatening  a  rain  that  never  quite  came, 
the  loneliness  of  the  land  seemed  to  befog  all  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  future.  ...  He  wanted  the  lamp-lit  se- 
curity of  his  room,  with  the  Turk  and  the  Gang  in  red 
sweaters,  singing  ragtime;  with  the  Frazer  affair  a  bad 
dream  that  was  forgotten.  The  world  outside  Plato 
would  all  be  like  these  lowering  woods  and  dreary  swamps. 

He  turned.  He  could  find  solace  only  in  making  his 
mind  a  blank.  Sullen,  dull,  he  watched  the  sunset, 
watched  the  bellying  cumulus  clouds  mimic  the  Grand 
Canon.  He  had  to  see  the  Grand  Canon!  He  would! 
...  He  had  turned  the  corner.  His  clammy  heart  was 
warming.  He  was  slowly  coming  to  understand  that 
he  was  actually  free  to  take  youth's  freedom. 

He  saw  the  vision  of  the  America  through  which  he 
might  follow  the  trail  like  the  pioneers  whose  spiritual 
descendant  he  was.  How  noble  was  the  panorama  that 
thrilled  this  one-generation  American  can  be  understood 

121 


THE  TRAIL  OF  THE   HAWK 

only  by  those  who  have  smelled  our  brown  soil;  not  by 
the  condescending  gods  from  abroad  who  come  hither  to 
gather  money  by  lecturing  on  our  evil  habit  of  money- 
gathering,  and  return  to  Europe  to  report  that  America 
is  a  land  of  Irish  politicians,  Jewish  theatrical  managers, 
and  mining  millionaires  who  invariably  say,  "I  swan  to 
calculate";  all  of  them  huddled  in  unfriendly  hotels  or 
in  hovels  set  on  hopeless  prairie.  Not  such  the  America 
that  lifted  Carl's  chin  in  wonder 

Cities  of  tall  towers;  tawny  deserts  of  the  Southwest 
and  the  flawless  sky  of  cornflower  blue  over  sage-brush 
and  painted  butte;  silent  forests  of  the  Northwest; 
golden  China  dragons  of  San  Francisco;  old  orchards  of 
New  England;  the  oily  Gulf  of  Mexico  where  tramp 
steamers  puff  down  to  Rio;  a  snow-piled  cabin  among 
somber  pines  of  northern  mountains.  Elsewhere,  else- 
where, elsewhere,  beyond  the  sky-line,  under  larger  stars, 
where  men  ride  jesting  and  women  smile.  Names  allur- 
ing to  the  American  he  repeated — Shenandoah,  Santa 
Ynez,  the  Little  Big  Horn,  Baton  Rouge,  the  Great 
Smokies,  Rappahannock,  Arizona,  Cheyenne,  Mononga- 
hela,  Androscoggin;  canon  and  bayou;  sycamore  and 
mesquite;  Broadway  and  El  Camino  Real.  .  .  . 

He  hurled  along  into  Plato.  He  went  to  Mrs.  Henkel's 
for  supper.  He  smiled  at  the  questions  dumped  upon 
him,  and  evaded  answering.  He  took  Mae  Thurston 
aside  and  told  her  that  he  was  leaving  Plato.  He  wanted 
to  call  on  Professor  Frazer.  He  did  not  dare.  From  a 
pleasant  gentleman  drinking  tea  Frazer  had  changed 
to  a  prophet  whom  he  revered. 

Carl  darted  into  his  room.  The  Turk  was  waiting  for 
him.  Carl  cut  short  the  Turk's  apologies  for  not  having 
supported  Frazer,  with  the  dreadful  curt  pleasantness  of 
an  alienated  friend,  and,  as  he  began  packing  his  clothes 
in  two  old  suit-cases,  insisted,  "It's  all  right — was  your 
biz  whether  you  stood  up  in  chapel  or  not."  He  hunted 
diligently  through  the  back  of  the  closet  for  a  non-ex- 

122 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

istent  shoe,  in  order  to  get  away  from  the  shamefaced 
melancholy  which  covered  the  Turk  when  Carl  presented 
him  with  all  his  books,  his  skees,  and  his  pet  hockey-stick. 
He  prolonged  the  search  because  it  had  occurred  to  him 
that,  as  it  was  now  eleven  o'clock,  and  the  train  north  left 
at  midnight,  the  Minneapolis  train  at  2  A.M.,  it  might  be 
well  to  decide  where  he  was  going  when  he  went  away. 
Well,  Minneapolis  and  Chicago.  Beyond  that — he'd 
wait  and  see.  Anywhere — he  could  go  anywhere  in  all 
the  world,  now.  .  .  . 

He  popped  out  of  the  closet  cheerfully. 

While  the  Turk  mooned,  Carl  wrote  short  honest  notes 
to  Gertie,  to  his  banker  employer,  to  Bennie  Rusk,  whom 
he  addressed  as  "Friend  Ben."  He  found  himself  writ- 
ing a  long  and  spirited  letter  to  Bone  Stillman,  who  came 
out  of  the  backwater  of  ineffectuality  as  a  man  who  had 
dared.  Frankly  he  wrote  to  his  mother — his  mammy 
he  wistfully  called  her.  To  his  father  he  could  not  write. 
With  quick  thumps  of  his  fist  he  stamped  the  letters,  then 
glanced  at  the  Turk.  He  was  gay,  mature,  business- 
like, ready  for  anything.  "I'll  pull  out  in  half  an  hour 
now,"  he  chuckled. 

"Gosh !"  sighed  the  Turk.  " I  feel  as  if  I  was  responsible 
for  everything.  Oh,  say,  here's  a  letter  I  forgot  to  give 
you.  Came  this  afternoon." 

The  letter  was  from  Gertie. 

DEAR  CARL, — I  hear  that  you  are  standing  for  that  Frazer 
just  as  much  as  ever  and  really  Carl  I  think  you  might  consider 
other  people's  feelings  a  little  and  not  be  so  selfish 

Without  finishing  it,  Carl  tore  up  the  letter  in  a  fury. 
Then,  "Poor  kid;  guess  she  means  well,"  he  thought,  and 
made  an  imaginary  bow  to  her  in  farewell. 

There  was  a  certain  amount  of  the  milk  of  human- 
kindness  in  the  frozen  husk  he  had  for  a  time  become. 
But  he  must  be  blamed  for  icily  rejecting  the  Turk's 
blundering  attempts  to  make  peace.  He  courteously — 
9  123 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

courtesy,  between  these  two! — declined  the  Turk's  offer 
to  help  him  carry  his  suit-cases  to  the  station.  That  was 
like  a  slap. 

"Good-by.  Hang  on  tight,"  he  said,  as  he  stooped  to 
the  heavy  suit-cases  and  marched  out  of  the  door  without 
looking  back. 

By  some  providence  he  was  saved  from  the  crime  of 
chilly  self-righteousness.  On  the  darkness  of  the  stairs 
he  felt  all  at  once  how  responsive  a  chum  the  Turk  had 
been.  He  dropped  the  suit-cases,  not  caring  how  they 
fell,  rushed  back  into  the  room,  and  found  the  Turk  still 
staring  at  the  door.  He  cried: 

"Old  man,  I  was Say,  you  yahoo,  are  you  going  to 

make  me  carry  both  my  valises  to  the  depot?" 

They  rushed  off  together,  laughing,  promising  to  write 
to  each  other. 

The  Minneapolis  train  pulled  out,  with  Carl  trying  to 
appear  commonplace.  None  of  the  sleepy  passengers 
saw  that  the  Golden  Fleece  was  draped  about  him  or 
that  under  his  arm  he  bore  the  harp  of  Ulysses.  He  was 
merely  a  young  man  taking  a  train  at  a  way-station. 


Part  II 
THE  ADVENTURE  OF  ADVENTURING 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THERE  are  to-day  in  the  mind  of  Carl  Ericson  many 
confused  recollections  of  the  purposeless  wanderings 
which  followed  his  leaving  Plato  College.  For  more  than 
a  year  he  went  down,  down  in  the  social  scale,  down  to 
dirt  and  poverty  and  association  with  the  utterly  tough 
and  reckless.  But  day  by  day  his  young  joy  of  wandering 
matured  into  an  ease  in  dealing  with  whatever  man  or 
situation  he  might  meet.  He  had  missed  the  opportunity 
of  becoming  a  respectable  citizen  which  Plato  offered. 
Now  he  did  all  the  grubby  things  which  Plato  obviated 
that  her  sons  might  rise  to  a  place  in  society,  to  eighteen 
hundred  dollars  a  year  and  the  possession  of  evening 
clothes  and  a  knowledge  of  Greek.  But  the  light  danced 
more  perversely  in  his  eyes  every  day  of  his  roving. 

The  following  are  the  several  jobs  for  which  Carl  first 
applied  in  Chicago,  all  the  while  frightened  by  the  roar 
and  creeping  shadows  of  the  city: 

Tutoring  the  children  of  a  millionaire  brewer;  keeping 
time  on  the  Italian  and  Polack  washers  of  a  window- 
cleaning  company;  reporting  on  an  Evanston  newspaper; 
driving  a  taxicab,  a  motor-truck;  keeping  books  for  a 
suburban  real-estate  firm.  He  had  it  ground  into  him, 
as  grit  is  ground  into  your  face  when  you  fall  from  a 
bicycle,  that  every  one  in  a  city  of  millions  is  too  busy  to 
talk  to  a  stranger  unless  he  sees  a  sound  reason  for  talking. 
He  changed  the  Joralemon  Dynamite's  phrase,  "accept  a 
position"  to  "get  a  job" — and  he  got  a  job,  as  packer  in 
a  department  store  big  as  the  whole  of  Joralemon.  Since 
the  street  throngs  had  already  come  to  seem  no  more 

127 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

personal  and  separable  than  the  bricks  in  the  buildings, 
he  was  not  so  much  impressed  by  the  crowds  in  the  store 
as  by  the  number  of  things  for  women  to  hang  upon 
themselves.  He  would  ramble  in  at  lunch-time  to  stare 
at  them  and  marvel,  "You  can't  beat  it!" 

From  eight  till  twelve-thirty  and  from  one  till  six  or 
seven,  during  nearly  two  months,  Carl  stood  in  a  long, 
brick-walled,  stuffy  room,  inundated  by  floods  of  things 
to  pack,  wondering  why  he  had  ever  left  Plato  to  become 
the  slave  of  a  Swede  foreman.  The  Great  World,  as 
he  saw  it  through  a  tiny  hole  in  one  of  the  opaque  wire- 
glass  windows,  consisted  of  three  bars  of  a  rusty  fire-escape- 
landing  against  a  yellow  brick  wall,  with  a  smudge  of 
black  on  the  wall  below  the  landing. 

Within  two  days  he  was  calling  the  packing-room  a 
prison.  The  ceaseless  rattle  of  speckled  gray  wrapping- 
paper,  the  stamp  of  feet  on  the  gray  cement  floor,  the 
greasy  gray  hair  of  the  packer  next  to  him,  the  yellow- 
stained,  cracked,  gray  wash-bowl  that  served  for  thirty 
men,  such  was  his  food  for  dreams. 

Because  his  muscles  were  made  of  country  earth  and 
air  he  distanced  the  packers  from  the  slums,  however. 
He  became  incredibly  swift  at  nailing  boxes  and  crates 
and  smashing  the  heavy  wrapping-paper  into  shape  about 
odd  bundles.  The  foreman  promised  to  make  Carl  his 
assistant.  But  on  the  cold  December  Saturday  when  his 
elevation  was  due  he  glanced  out  of  a  window,  and  fare- 
well all  ambition  as  a  packer. 

The  window  belonged  to  the  Florida  Bakery  and 
Lunch  Room,  where  Carl  was  chastely  lunching.  There 
was  dirty  sawdust  on  the  floor,  six  pine  tables  painted 
red  and  adorned  with  catsup-bottles  whose  mouths  were 
clotted  with  dried  catsup,  and  a  long  counter  scattered 
with  bread  and  white  cakes  and  petrified  rolls.  Behind 
the  counter  a  snuffling,  ill-natured  fat  woman  in  slippers 
handed  bags  of  crullers  to  shrill-voiced  children  who 
came  in  with  pennies.  The  tables  were  packed  with  over- 

128 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

worked  and  underpaid  men,  to  whom  lunch  was  merely  a 
means  of  keeping  themselves  from  feeling  inconveniently 
empty — a  state  to  which  the  leadlike  viands  of  the  Florida 
Lunch  Room  were  a  certain  prevention. 

Carl  was  gulping  down  salty  beef  stew  and  bitter  coffee 
served  in  handleless  cups  half  an  inch  thick.  Beside  him, 
elbow  jogging  elbow,  was  a  surly-faced  man  in  overalls. 
The  old  German  waiters  shuffled  about  and  bawled, 
"Zwei  bif  stew,  ein  cheese-cake."  Dishes  clattered  in- 
cessantly. The  sicky-sweet  scent  of  old  pastry,  of  coffee- 
rings  with  stony  raisins  and  buns  smeared  with  dried 
cocoanut  fibers,  seemed  to  permeate  even  the  bitter 
coffee. 

Carl  got  down  most  of  his  beef  stew,  attacked  and  gave 
up  a  chunk  of  hard  boiled  potato,  and  lighted  a  cheap 
Virginia  cigarette.  He  glanced  out  of  the  dirty  window. 
Before  it,  making  inquiries  of  a  big,  leisurely  policeman, 
was  a  slim,  exquisite  girl  of  twenty,  rosy-cheeked,  smart 
of  hat,  impeccable  of  gloves,  with  fluffy  white  furs  be- 
neath her  chin,  which  cuddled  into  the  furs  with  a  hint 
of  a  life  bright  and  spacious.  She  laughed  as  she  talked 
to  the  policeman,  she  shrugged  her  shoulders  with  the 
exhilaration  of  winter,  and  skipped  away. 

"Bet  she'd  be  a  peach  to  know.  .  .  .  Fat  chance  I'd  have 
to  meet  her,  wrapping  up  baby-carriages  for  the  North 
Shore  commuters  all  day!  All  day!  .  .  .  Well,  guess  I'm 
going  to  honorably  discharge  myself!" 

He  left  the  job  that  afternoon. 

His  satiny  Norse  cheeks  shone  as  he  raced  home  through 
a  rising  blizzard,  after  dinner  at  the  Florida  Lunch  Room, 
where  he  had  allowed  himself  a  ten-cent  dessert  for 
celebration. 

But  when  he  lolled  in  his  hall  bedroom,  with  his  eyes 
attracted,  as  usual,  to  the  three  cracks  in  the  blue-painted 
ceiling  which  made  a  rough  map  of  Africa,  when  he 
visioned  lands  where  there  were  lions  and  desert  instead 
of  department-store  packages,  his  happiness  wilted  in  face 

129 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

of  the  fact  that  he  had  only  $10.42,  with  $8.00  due  him 
from  the  store  the  following  Tuesday.  Several  times  he 
subtracted  the  $3.00  he  owed  the  landlady  from  $18.42, 
but  the  result  persisted  in  being  only  $15.42.  He  could 
not  make  $15.42  appear  a  reasonable  sum  with  which 
to  start  life  anew. 

He  had  to  search  for  a  new  job  that  evening.  Only — 
he  was  so  tired;  it  was  so  pleasant  to  lie  there  with  his 
sore  feet  cooling  against  the  wall,  picturing  a  hunt  in 
Africa,  with  native  servants  bringing  him  things  to  eat: 
juicy  steaks  and  French-fried  potatoes  and  gallons  of  ale 
(a  repast  which  he  may  have  been  ignorant  in  assigning 
to  the  African  jungles,  but  which  seemed  peculiarly  well 
chosen,  after  a  lunch-room  dinner  of  watery  corned-beef 
hash,  burnt  German-fried  potatoes,  and  indigestible  hot 
mince-pie).  His  thoughts  drifted  off  to  Plato.  But 
Carl  had  a  certain  resoluteness  even  in  these  loose  days. 
He  considered  the  manceuvers  for  a  new  job.  He  de- 
sired one  which  would  permit  him  to  go  to  theaters  with 
the  girl  in  white  furs  whom  he  had  seen  that  noon — the 
unknown  fairy  of  his  discontent. 

It  may  be  noted  that  he  took  this  life  quite  seriously. 
Though  he  did  not  suppose  that  he  was  going  to  continue 
dwelling  in  a  hall  bedroom,  yet  never  did  he  regard  him- 
self as  a  collegian  Haroun-al-Raschid  on  an  amusing 
masquerade,  pretending  to  be  no  better  than  the  men 
with  whom  he  worked.  Carl  was  no  romantic  hero  incog. 
He  was  a  workman,  and  he  knew  it.  Was  not  his  father  a 
carpenter?  his  father's  best  friend  a  tailor?  Had  he 
not  been  a  waiter  at  Plato? 

But  not  always  a  workman.  Carl  had  no  conception 
of  world-wide  class-consciousness;  he  had  no  pride  in 
being  a  proletarian.  Though  from  Bone's  musings  and 
Frazer's  lectures  he  had  drawn  a  vague  optimism  about 
a  world-syndicate  of  nations,  he  took  it  for  granted  that 
he  was  going  to  be  rich  as  soon  as  he  could. 

Job.  He  had  to  have  a  job.  He  got  stiffly  up  from  the 

130 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

iron  bed,  painfully  drew  on  his  shoes,  after  inspecting  the 
hole  in  the  sole  of  the  left  shoe  and  the  ripped  seam  at 
the  back  of  the  right.  He  pulled  tight  the  paper-thin 
overcoat  which  he  had  bought  at  a  second-hand  dealer's 
shop,  and  dared  a  Chicago  blizzard,  with  needles  of  snow 
thundering  by  on  a  sixty-mile  gale.  Through  a  street 
of  unutterably  drab  stores  and  saloons  he  plowed  to  the 
Unallied  Taxicab  Company's  garage.  He  felt  lonely, 
cold,  but  he  observed  with  ceaseless  interest  the  new 
people,  different  people,  who  sloped  by  him  in  the  dun 
web  of  the  blizzard.  The  American  marveled  at  a  re- 
cently immigrated  Slav's  astrachan  cap. 

He  had  hung  about  the  Unallied  garage  on  evenings 
when  he  was  too  poor  to  go  to  vaudeville.  He  had  become 
decidedly  friendly  with  the  night  washer,  a  youngster 
from  Minneapolis.  Trotting  up  to  the  washer,  who  was 
digging  caked  snow  from  the  shoes  of  a  car,  he  blurted: 

"Say,  Coogan,  I've  beat  my  job  at  's.  How's 

chances  for  getting  a  taxi  to  drive?  You  know  I  know 
the  game." 

"You?  Driving  a  taxi?"  stammered  the  washer. 
"Why,  say,  there  was  a  guy  that  was  a  road-tester  for 
the  Blix  Company  and  he's  got  a  cousin  that  knows 
Bathhouse  John,  and  that  guy  with  all  his  pull  has  been 
trying  to  get  on  drivin'  here  for  the  last  six  months  and 
ain't  landed  it,  so  you  see  about  how  much  chance  you 
got!" 

"Gosh!  it  don't  look  much  like  I  had  much  chance,  for 
a  fact." 

"Tell  you  what  I'll  do,  though.  Why  don't  you  get 
on  at  some  automobile  factory,  and  then  you  could  ring 
in  as  a  chauffeur,  soon  's  you  got  some  recommends  you 
could  take  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  employment  bureau." 
The  washer  gouged  at  a  clot  of  ice  with  his  heel,  swore 
profusely,  and  went  on:  "Here.  You  go  over  to  the 
Lodestar  Motor  Company's  office,  over  on  La  Salle,  Mon- 
day, and  ask  for  Bill  Coogan,  on  the  sales  end.  He's  me 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

cousin,  and  you  tell  him  to  give  you  a  card  to  the  foreman 
out  at  the  works,  and  I  guess  maybe  you'll  get  a  job,  all 
right." 

Tuesday  morning,  after  a  severe  questioning  by  the 
foreman,  Carl  was  given  a  week's  try-out  without  pay  at 
the  Lodestar  factory.  He  proved  to  be  one  of  those  much- 
sought  freaks  in  the  world  of  mechanics,  a  natural  filer. 
The  uninspired  filer,  unaware  of  the  niceties  of  the  art, 
saws  up  and  down,  whereas  the  instinctive  filer,  like  Carl, 
draws  his  file  evenly  across  the  metal,  and  the  result 
fits  its  socket  truly.  So  he  was  given  welcome,  paid 
twenty-five  cents  an  hour,  and  made  full  member  of 
exactly  such  a  gang  as  he  had  known  at  Plato,  after  he 
had  laughed  away  the  straw  boss  who  tried  to  make  him 
go  ask  for  a  left-handed  monkey-wrench.  He  roomed  at 
a  machinists'  boarding-house,  and  enjoyed  the  furious 
discussions  over  religion  and  the  question  of  air  versus 
water  cooling  far  more  than  he  had  ever  enjoyed  the 
polite  jesting  at  Mrs.  Henkel's. 

He  became  friendly  with  the  foreman  of  the  repair- 
shop,  and  was  promised  a  "chance."  While  the  driver 
who  made  the  road-tests  of  the  cars  was  ill  Carl  was  called 
on  as  a  substitute.  The  older  workmen  warned  him  that 
no  one  could  begin  road-testing  so  early  and  hold  the  job. 
But  Carl  happened  to  drive  the  vice-president  of  the  firm. 
He  discussed  bass-fishing  in  Minnesota  with  the  vice- 
president,  and  he  was  retained  as  road-tester,  getting  his 
chauffeur's  license.  Two  months  later,  when  he  was 
helping  in  the  overhauling  of  a  car  in  the  repair-shop, 
he  heard  a  full-bodied  man  with  a  smart  English  overcoat 
and  a  supercilious  red  face  ask  curtly  of  the  shop  foreman 
where  he  could  get  a  "crack  shufFer,  right  away,  one  that 
can  give  the  traffic  cops  something  to  do  for  their  money." 

The  foreman  always  stopped  to  scratch  his  chin  when 
he  had  to  think.  This  process  gave  Carl  time  to  look 
up  from  his  repairs  and  blandly  remark:  "That's  me. 
Want  to  try  me?" 

132 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Half  an  hour  later  Carl  was  engaged  at  twenty-five 
dollars  a  week  as  the  Ruddy  One's  driver.  Before  Monday 
noon  he  had  convinced  the  Ruddy  One  that  he  was  no 
servant,  but  a  mechanical  expert.  He  drove  the  Ruddy 
One  to  his  Investments  and  Securities  office  in  the  morning, 
and  back  at  five;  to  restaurants  in  the  evening.  Not 
infrequently,  with  the  wind  whooping  about  corners,  he 
slept  peacefully  in  the  car  till  two  in  the  morning,  outside 
a  cafe.  And  he  was  perfectly  happy.  He  was  at  last 
seeing  the  Great  World.  As  he  manoeuvered  along  State 
Street  he  rejoiced  in  the  complications  of  the  traffic  and 
tooted  his  horn  unnecessarily.  As  he  waited  before  tall 
buildings,  at  noon,  he  gazed  up  at  them  with  a  superior 
air  of  boredom — because  he  was  so  boyishly  proud  of 
being  a  part  of  all  this  titanic  life  that  he  was  afraid 
he  might  show  it.  He  gloried  in  every  new  road,  in 
driving  along  the  Lake  Shore,  where  the  horizon  was 
bounded  not  by  unimaginative  land,  but  by  restless 
water. 

Then  the  Ruddy  One's  favorite  roads  began  to  be 
familiar  to  Carl,  too  familiar,  and  he  so  hated  his  sot  of 
an  employer  that  he  caught  himself  muttering,  while 
driving,  "Thank  the  Lord  I  sit  in  front  and  don't  have  to 
see  that  chunk  of  raw  beefsteak  he  calls  a  neck." 

While  he  waited  for  the  fifth  time  before  a  certain 
expensive  but  not  exclusive  roadhouse,  with  the  bouncing 
giggles  of  girls  inside  spoiling  the  spring  night,  he  studied 
the  background  as  once  he  had  studied  his  father's  wood- 
shed. He  was  not,  unfortunately,  shocked  by  wine  and 
women.  But  he  was  bored  by  box-trees.  There  was  a 
smugly  clipped  box-tree  on  either  side  of  the  carriage 
entrance,  the  leaves  like  cheap  green  lacquer  in  the  glare 
of  the  arc-light,  which  brought  out  all  the  artificiality 
of  the  gray-and-black  cinder  drive.  He  felt  that  five 
pilgrimages  to  even  the  best  of  box-trees  were  enough. 
It  would  be  perfectly  unreasonable  for  a  free  man  to  come 
here  to  stare  at  box-trees  a  sixth  time.  "All  right,"  he 

133 


THE  TRAIL  OF  THE   HAWK 

growled.  "I  guess  my-wandering-boy-to-night  is  going 
to  beat  it  again." 

While  he  drove  to  the  garage  he  pondered:  "Is  it  worth 
twenty-five  plunks  to  me  to  be  able  to  beat  it  to-night 
instead  of  waiting  four  days  till  pay-day?  Nope.  I'm 
a  poor  man." 

But  at  5  A.M.  he  was  hanging  about  the  railroad-yards 
at  Hammond,  recalling  the  lessons  of  youth  in  "flipping 
trains";  and  at  seven  he  was  standing  on  the  bumpers 
between  two  freight-cars,  clinging  to  the  brake-rod,  look- 
ing out  to  the  open  meadows  of  Indiana,  laughing  to  see 
farm-houses  ringed  with  apple-blossoms  and  sweet  with 
April  morning.  The  cinders  stormed  by  him.  As  he 
swung  with  the  cars,  on  curves,  he  saw  the  treacherous 
wheels  grinding  beneath  him.  But  to  the  chuck-a-chuck, 
chuck-a-chuck,  chuck-a-chuck  of  the  trucks  he  hummed, 
"Never  turn  back,  never  tur'  back,  never  tur*  back." 


CHAPTER  XIV 

A  YOUNG  hobo  named  Carl  Ericson  crawled  from  the 
rods  of  an  N.  &  W.  freight-car  at  Roanoke,  Virginia, 
on  a  May  day,  with  spring  at  full  tide  and  the  Judas- 
trees  a  singing  pink  on  the  slopes  of  the  Blue  Ridge. 

"Hm!"  grunted  the  young  hobo.  "I  like  these  moun- 
tains. Guess  I'll  stay  here  awhile.  .  .  .  Virginia!  Plan- 
tations and  Civil  War  history  and  Richmond  and  every- 
thing, and  me  here!" 

A  frowzy  old  hobo  poked  a  somnolent  head  up  from  a 
pile  of  lumber  near  the  tracks  and  yawned  welcome  to  the 
recruit.  "Hello,  Slim.  How's  tricks?" 

"Pretty  good.  What's  the  best  section  to  batter  for  a 
poke-out,  Billy?" 

"To  the  right,  over  that  way,  and  straight  out." 

"Much  'bliged,"  said  Slim — erstwhile  Ericson.  "Say, 
j'  know  of  any  jobs  in  this " 

"Any  wkats?" 

"Jobs." 

"Jobs?  You  looking  for Say,  you  beat  it. 

Gwan.  Chase  yourself.  Gwan  now;  don't  stand  there. 
You  ain't  no  decent  'bo.  You're  another  of  those  Un- 
fortunate Workmen  that's  spoiling  the  profesh."  The 
veteran  stared  at  Carl  reprovingly,  yet  with  a  little  sad- 
ness, too,  at  the  thought  of  how  bitterly  he  had  been 
deceived  in  this  young  comrade,  and  his  uncombed  head 
slowly  vanished  amid  the  lumber. 

Carl  grinned  and  started  up-town.  He  walked  into 
four  restaurants.  At  noon,  in  white  jacket,  he  was 
bustling  about  as  waiter  in  the  dining-room  of  the 

135 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Waskahominie  Hotel,  which  had  "white  service"  as  a 
feature. 

Within  two  days  he  was  boon  companion  of  a  guest  of 
the  Waskahominie — Parker  Heye,  an  actor  famous  from 
Cape  Charles  to  Shockeysville,  now  playing  heavies  at 
Roanoke  in  the  Great  Riley  Tent  Show,  Presenting  a 
Popular  Repertoire  of  Famous  Melodramas  under  Can- 
vas, Rain  or  Shine,  Admittance  Twenty-five  Cents, 
Section  Reserved  for  Colored  People,  the  Best  Show 
under  Canvas,  This  Week  Only. 

When  Parker  Heye  returned  from  the  theater  Carl 
sat  with  him  in  a  room  which  had  calico-like  wall-paper, 
a  sunken  bed  with  a  comforter  out  of  which  oozed  a  bit 
of  its  soiled  cotton  entrails,  a  cracked  water-pitcher  on 
a  staggering  wash-stand,  and  a  beautiful  new  cuspidor  of 
white  china  hand-painted  with  pink  moss-roses  tied  with 
narrow  blue  ribbon. 

Carl  listened  credulously  to  Heye's  confidences  as  to 
how  jealous  was  Riley,  the  actor-manager,  of  Heye's  art, 
how  Heye  had  "knocked  them  all  down"  in  a  stock  com- 
pany at  Newport  News,  and  what  E.  H.  Sothern  had  said 
to  him  when  they  met  in  Richmond  as  guests  of  the 
Seven  Pines  Club. 

"Say,"  rasped  Heye,  "you're  a  smart  young  fellow, 
good-looking,  ejucated.  Why  don't  you  try  to  get  an 
engagement  ?  I'll  knock  you  down  to  Riley.  The  second 
juvenile  's  going  to  leave  on  Saturday,  and  there  ain't 
hardly  time  to  get  anybody  from  Norfolk." 

"Golly!  that  'd  be  great!"  cried  Carl,  who,  like  every 
human  being  since  Eden,  with  the  possible  exceptions  of 
Calvin  and  Richard  Mansfield,  had  a  secret  belief  that  he 
could  be  a  powerful  actor. 

"Well,  I'll  see  what  I  can  do  for  you,"  said  Heye,  at 
parting,  alternately  snapping  his  suspenders  and  scratch- 
ing his  head.  Though  he  was  in  his  stocking-feet  and  coat- 
less,  though  the  back  of  his  neck  was  a  scraggle  of  hair, 
Parker  Heye  was  preferable  to  the  three  Swiss  waiters 

136 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

snoring  in  the  hot  room  under  the  eaves,  with  its  door 
half  open,  opposite  the  half-open  door  of  the  room  where 
negro  chambermaids  tumbled  and  snorted  in  uncouth 
slumber.  Carl's  nose  wrinkled  with  bitter  fastidiousness 
as  he  pulled  off  his  clothes,  sticky  with  heat,  and  glared 
at  the  swathed  forms  of  the  waiters.  He  was  the  aristo- 
crat among  proletarians,  going  back  to  His  Own  People 
— of  the  Great  Riley  Tent  Show. 

As  second  juvenile  of  the  Tent  Show,  Carl  received  only 
twelve  dollars  a  week,  but  Mr.  Riley  made  him  promises 
rich  as  the  Orient  beryl,  and  permitted  him  to  follow 
the  example  of  two  of  the  bandsmen  and  pitch  a  cot  on 
the  trampled  hay  flooring  of  the  dressing-room  tent,  be- 
hind the  stage.  There  also  Carl  prepared  breakfast  on 
an  alcohol-stove.  The  canvas  creaked  all  night;  negroes 
and  small  boys  stuck  inquisitive  heads  under  the  edge  of 
the  canvas.  But  it  was  worth  it — to  travel  on  again; 
to  have  his  mornings  free  except  for  an  hour's  rehearsal; 
to  climb  to  upland  meadows  of  Virginia  and  Kentucky, 
among  the  pines  and  laurel  and  rhododendron;  tramping 
up  past  the  log  cabins  plastered  with  mud,  where  pick- 
aninnies stared  shyly,  past  glens  shining  with  dogwood, 
and  friendly  streams.  Once  he  sat  for  an  hour  on  Easter 
Knob,  gazing  through  a  distant  pass  whose  misty  blue 
he  pretended  was  the  ocean.  Once  he  heard  there  were 
moonshiners  back  in  the  hills.  He  talked  to  bearded 
Dunkards  and  their  sunbonneted  wives;  and  when  he 
found  a  Confederate  veteran  he  listened  to  the  tale 
of  the  defense  of  Richmond,  delighted  to  find  that  the 
Boys  in  Gray  were  not  merely  names  in  the  history- 
books. 

Of  all  these  discoveries  he  wrote  to  his  mother,  wishing 
that  her  weary  snow-bleached  life  might  know  the  South- 
ern sun.  And  the  first  five  dollars  he  saved  he  sent  to 
her. 

But  as  soon  as  Carl  became  an  actor  Parker  Heye  grew 

137 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

jealous  of  him,  and  was  gratingly  contemptuous  when  he 
showed  him  how  to  make  up,  among  the  cheap  actors 
jammed  in  the  men's  dressing-room,  before  a  pine  board 
set  on  two  saw-horses,  under  the  light  of  a  flaring  kerosene- 
torch.  Carl  came  to  hate  Heye  and  his  splotched  face, 
his  pale,  large  eyes  and  yellow  teeth  and  the  bang  on  his 
forehead,  his  black  string  tie  that  was  invariably  askew, 
his  slovenly  blue  suit,  his  foppishly  shaped  tan  button 
shoes  with  "bulldog"  toes.  Heye  invariably  jeered: 
"Don't  make  up  so  heavy.  .  .  .  Well,  put  a  little  rouge 
on  your  lips.  What  d'you  think  you  are?  A  blooming 
red-lipped  Venus?  .  .  .  Try  to  learn  to  walk  across  the 
stage  as  if  you  had  one  leg  that  wasn't  wood,  anyway. 
.  .  .  It's  customary  to  go  to  sleep  when  you're  playing  a 
listening  role,  but  don't  snore!  .  .  .  Oh,  you're  a  swell 
actor!  Think  of  me  swallering  your  story  about  having 
been  t'  college!  .  .  .  Don't  make  up  your  eyebrows  so 
heavy,  you  fool.  .  .  .  Why  you  ever  wanted  to  be  an 
actor !" 

The  Great  Riley  agreed  with  all  that  Heye  said,  and 
marveled  with  Heye  that  he  had  ever  tried  an  amateur. 
Carl  foundithe  dressing-room  a  hay-dusty  hell.  But  he 
enjoyed  acting  in  "The  Widow's  Penny,"  "Alabama 
Nell,"  "The  Moonshiner's  Daughter,"  and  "The  Crook's 
Revenge"  far  more  than  he  had  enjoyed  picking  phrases 
out  of  Shakespeare  at  a  vaguely  remembered  Plato.  Since, 
in  Joralemon  and  Plato,  he  had  been  brought  up  on  melo- 
drama, he  believed  as  much  as  did  the  audience  in  the 
plays.  It  was  a  real  mountain  cabin  from  which  he  fired 
wonderfully  loud  guns  in  "The  Moonshiner's  Daughter"; 
and  when  the  old  mountaineer  cried,  "They  ain't  go- 
ing to  steal  mah  gal!"  Carl  was  damp  at  the  eyes,  and 
swore  with  real  fervor  the  oath  to  protect  the  girl,  sure 
that  in  the  ravine  behind  the  back-drop  his  bearded  foe- 
men  were  lurking. 

"The  Crook's  Revenge"  was  his  favorite,  for  he  was 
cast  as  a  young  millionaire  and  wore  evening  clothes 

138 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

(second-hand).  He  held  off  a  mob  of  shrieking  gangsters, 
crouched  behind  an  overturned  table  in  a  gambling-den. 
He  coolly  stroked  the  lovely  hair  of  the  ingenue,  Miss 
Evelyn  L'Ewysse,  with  one  hand,  leveled  a  revolver 
with  the  other,  and  made  fearless  jests  the  while,  to 
the  infinite  excitement  of  the  audience,  especially  of 
the  hyah-hyah-hyahing  negroes,  whose  faces,  under  the 
flicker  of  lowered  calcium-carbide  lights,  made  a  segre- 
gated strip  of  yellow-black  polka-dotted  with  white  eye- 
balls. 

When  the  people  were  before  him,  respectful  to  art 
under  canvas,  Carl  could  love  them;  but  even  the  tiniest 
ragged-breeched  darky  was  bold  in  his  curiosity  about  the 
strolling  players  when  they  appeared  outside,  and  Carl 
was  self-conscious  about  the  giggles  and  stares  that 
surrounded  him  when  he  stopped  on  the  street  or  went 
into  a  drug-store  for  the  comfortable  solace  of  a  banana 
split.  He  was  in  a  rage  whenever  a  well-dressed  girl 
peeped  at  him  amusedly  from  a  one-lunged  runabout. 
The  staring  so  flustered  him  that  even  the  pride  of  coming 
from  Chicago  and  knowing  about  motors  did  not  prevent 
his  feeling  feeble  at  the  knees  as  he  tried  to  stalk  by  the 
grinning  motored  aristocracy.  He  would  return  to  the 
show-tent,  to  hate  the  few  tawdry  drops  and  flats — the 
patch  of  green  spattered  with  dirty  white  which  variously 
simulated  a  daisy-field,  a  mountainside,  and  that  part  of 
Central  Park  directly  opposite  the  Fifth  Avenue  residence 
of  the  millionaire  counterfeiter,  who,  you  remember, 
always  comes  out  into  the  street  to  plot  with  his  con- 
federates. Carl  hated  with  peculiar  heartiness  the 
anemic,  palely  varnished,  folding  garden  bench,  which 
figured  now  as  a  seat  in  the  moonshiner's  den,  and 
now,  with  a  cotton  leopard  -  skin  draped  over  it,  as  a 
fauteuil  in  the  luxurious  drawing-room  of  Mrs.  Van 
Antwerp.  The  garden  bench  was,  however,  associated 
with  his  learning  to  make  stage  love  to  Miss  Evelyn 
L'Ewysse. 

10  139 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

It  was  difficult  to  appear  unconscious  of  fifty  small  boys 
all  smacking  their  lips  in  unison,  while  he  kissed  the  air 
one  centimeter  in  front  of  Miss  L'Ewysse's  lips.  But  he 
learned  the  art.  Indeed,  he  began  to  lessen  that  centi- 
meter of  safety. 

Miss  Evelyn  L'Ewysse  (christened  Lena  Ludwig,  and 
heir  presumptive  to  one  of  the  best  delicatessens  in 
Newport  News)  reveled  in  love-making  on  and  off.  Carl 
was  attracted  by  her  constantly,  uncomfortably.  She 
smiled  at  him  in  the  wings,  smoothed  her  fluffy  blond  hair 
at  him,  and  told  him  in  confidence  that  she  was  a  high- 
school  graduate,  that  she  was  used  to  much,  oh,  much 
better  companies,  and  was  playing  under  canvas  for  a 
lark.  She  bubbled:  " Ach,  Louie,  say,  ain't  it  hot! 
Honest,  Mr.  Ericson,  I  don't  see  how  you  stand  it  like 
you  do.  ...  Say,  honest,  that  was  swell  business  you 
pulled  in  the  third  act  last  night.  .  .  .  Say,  I  know  what 
let's  do — let's  get  up  a  swell  act  and  get  on  the  Peanut 
Circuit.  We'd  hit  Broadway  with  a  noise  like  seventeen 
marine  bands.  .  .  .  Say,  honest,  Mr.  Ericson,  you  do  awful 

well  for I  bet  you  ain't  no  amachoor.  I  bet  you 

been  on  before." 

He  devoured  it. 

One  night,  finding  that  Miss  Evelyn  made  no  comment 
on  his  holding  her  hand,  he  lured  her  out  of  the  tent 
during  a  long  wait,  trembled,  and  kissed  her.  Her 
fingers  gripped  his  shoulders  agitatedly,  plucked  at  his 
sleeve  as  she  kissed  him  back.  She  murmured,  "Oh, 
you  hadn't  ought  to  do  that."  But  afterward  she  would 
kiss  him  every  time  they  were  alone,  and  she  told  him  with 
confidential  giggles  of  Parker  Heye's  awkward  attempts 
to  win  her.  Heye's  most  secret  notes  she  read,  till  Carl 
seriously  informed  her  that  she  was  violating  a  trust. 
Miss  Evelyn  immediately  saw  the  light  and  promised  she 
would  "never,  never,  never  do  anythin'  like  that  again, 
and,  honest,  she  hadn't  realized  she  was  doing  anythin' 
dishon'able,  but  Heye  is  such  an  old  pest";  which  was 

140 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

an  excuse  for  her  weeping  on  his  shoulder  and  his  kissing 
the  tears  away. 

All  day  he  looked  forward  to  their  meetings.  Yet 
constantly  the  law  of  the  adventurer,  which  means  the 
instinct  of  practical  decency,  warned  him  that  this  was 
no  amour  for  him;  that  he  must  not  make  love  where  he 
did  not  love;  that  this  good-hearted  vulgarian  was  too 

kindly  to  tamper  with  and  too  absurd  to  love.  Only 

And  again  his  breath  would  draw  in  with  swift  exultation 
as  he  recalled  how  elastic  were  her  shoulders  to  stroke. 

It  was  summer  now,  and  they  were  back  in  Virginia, 
touring  the  Eastern  Shore.  Carl,  the  prairie-born,  had 
been  within  five  miles  of  the  open  Atlantic,  though  he 
had  not  seen  it.  Along  the  endless  flat  potato-fields, 
broken  by  pine-groves  under  whose  sultry  shadow  negro 
cabins  sweltered,  the  heat  clung  persistently.  The  show- 
tent  was  always  filled  with  a  stale  scent  of  people. 

At  the  town  of  Nankiwoc  the  hotel  was  not  all  it  might 
have  been.  Evelyn  L'Ewysse  announced  that  she  was 
"good  and  sick  of  eating  a  vaudeville  dinner  with  the 
grub  acts  stuck  around  your  plate  in  a  lot  of  birds'  bath- 
tubs— little  mess  of  turnips  and  a  dab  of  spinach  and  a 
fried  cockroach.  And  when  it  comes  to  sleeping  another 
night  on  a  bed  like  a  gridiron,  no — thank — you!  And 
believe  me,  if  I  see  that  old  rube  hotel-keeper  comb  his 
whiskers  at  the  hall  hat-rack  again — he  keeps  a  baby  comb 
in  his  vest  pocket  with  a  lead-pencil  and  a  cigar  some 
drummer  gave  him — if  I  have  to  watch  him  comb  that 
alfalfa  again  I'll  bite  his  ears  off  and  get  pinched  by  the 
S.  P.  C.  A.!" 

With  Mrs.  Lubley,  the  old  lady  and  complacent  un- 
official chaperon  of  the  show,  Eve  was  going  to  imitate 
Carl  and  the  two  bandsmen,  and  sleep  in  the  dressing- 
room  tent,  over  half  of  which  was  devoted  to  the  women 
of  the  company. 

Every  day  Carl  warned  himself  that  he  must  go  no 
farther,  but  every  night  as  Eve  and  he  parted,  to  sleep 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

with  only  a  canvas  partition  between  them,  he  cursed  the 
presence  of  the  show  chaperon,  and  of  the  two  bandsmen, 
always  distressingly  awake  and  talking  till  after  midnight. 

A  hot  June  night.  The  whole  company  had  been  in- 
vited to  a  dance  at  the  U.  C.  V.  Hall;  the  two  bands- 
men were  going;  the  chaperon — lively  old  lady  with 
experience  on  the  burlesque  circuit — was  gaily  going. 
Carl  and  Eve  were  not.  It  had  taken  but  one  glance 
between  them  to  decide  that. 

They  sat  outside  the  silent  tent,  on  a  wardrobe  trunk. 
What  manner  of  night  it  was,  whether  starlit  or  sullen, 
Carl  did  not  know;  he  was  aware  only  that  it  was  op- 
pressive, and  that  Eve  was  in  his  arms  in  the  darkness. 
He  kissed  her  moist,  hot  neck.  He  babbled  incoherently 
of  the  show  people,  but  every  word  he  said  meant  that 
he  was  palpitating  because  her  soft  body  was  against  his. 
He  knew — and  he  was  sure  that  she  knew — that  when 
they  discussed  Heye's  string  tie  and  pretended  to  laugh, 
they  were  agitatedly  voicing  their  intoxication. 

His  voice  unsteady,  Carl  said:  "Jiminy!  it's  so  hot, 
Eve!  I'm  going  to  take  off  this  darn  shirt  and  collar  and 
put  on  a  soft  shirt.  S-say,  w-why  don't  you  put  on  a 
kimono  or  something?  Be  so  much  cooler." 

"Oh,  I  don't  know  as  I  ought  to "  She  was 

frightened,  awed  at  Bacchic  madness.  "D-do  you  think 
it  would  be  all  right?" 

"Why  not?  Guess  anybody's  got  a  right  to  get  cool 
— night  like  this.  Besides,  they  won't  be  back  till  4  G.M. 
And  you  got  to  get  cool.  Come  on." 

And  he  knew — and  he  was  sure  that  she  knew — that 
all  he  said  was  pretense.  But  she  rose  and  said,  nebu- 
lously, as  she  stood  before  him,  ruffling  his  hair:  "Well, 

I  would  like  to  get  cool.  If  you  think  it's  all  right 

I'll  put  on  something  cooler,  anyway." 

She  went.  Carl  could  hear  a  rustling  in  the  women's 
end  of  the  dressing-room  tent.  Fevered,  he  listened  to 
it.  Fevered,  he  changed  to  an  outing-shirt,  open  at  the 

142 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

throat.  He  ran  out,  not  to  miss  a  moment  with  her.  .  .  . 
She  had  not  yet  come.  He  was  too  overwrought  to  heed 
a  small  voice  in  him,  a  voice  born  of  snow-fields  colored 
with  sunset  and  trained  in  the  quietudes  of  Henry  Frazer's 
house,  which  insisted:  "Go  slow!  Stop!"  A  louder 
voice  throbbed  like  the  pulsing  of  the  artery  in  his  neck, 
"She's  coming!" 

Through  the  darkness  her  light  garment  swished  against 
the  long  grass.  He  sprang  up.  Then  he  was  holding  her, 
bending  her  head  back.  He  exulted  to  find  that  his  grip- 
ping hand  was  barred  from  the  smoothness  of  her  side 
only  by  thin  silk  that  glided  and  warmed  under  his 
fingers.  She  sat  on  his  knees  and  snuggled  her  loosened 
hair  tinglingly  against  his  bare  chest.  He  felt  that  she 
was  waiting  for  him  to  go  on. 

Suddenly  he  could  not,  would  not,  go  on. 

"Dearest,  we  mustn't!"  he  mourned. 

"O  Carl!"  she  sobbed,  and  stopped  his  words  with 
clinging  lips. 

He  found  himself  waiting  till  she  should  finish  the  kiss 
that  he  might  put  an  end  to  this. 

Perhaps  he  was  checked  by  provincial  prejudices  about 
chivalry.  But  perhaps  he  had  learned  a  little  self-control. 
In  any  case,  he  had  stopped  for  a  second  to  think,  and 
the  wine  of  love  was  gone  flat.  He  wished  she  would 
release  him.  Also,  her  hair  was  tickling  his  ear.  He 
waited,  patiently,  till  she  should  finish  the  kiss. 

Her  lips  drew  violently  from  his,  and  she  accused, 
"You  don't  want  to  kiss  me!" 

"Look  here;   I  want  to  kiss  you,  all  right — Lord 

For  a  second  his  arms  tightened;  then  he  went  on,  cold: 
"But  we'll  both  be  good  and  sorry  if  we  go  too  far.  It 
isn't  just  a  cowardly  caution.  It's Oh,  you  know." 

"Oh  yes,  yes,  yes,  we  mustn't  go  too  far,  Carl.  But 
can't  we  just  sit  like  this?  O  sweetheart,  I  am  so  tired! 
I  want  somebody  to  care  for  me  a  little.  That  isn't 
wicked,  is  it?  I  want  you  to  take  me  in  your  arms  and 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

hold  me  close,  close,  and  comfort  me.  I  want  so  much 
to  be  comforted.  We  needn't  go  any  further,  need  we?" 

"Oh  now,  good  Lord!  Eve,  look  here:  don't  you  know 
we  can't  go  on  and  not  go  farther?  I'm  having  a  hard 

enough  time "  He  sprang  up,  shakily  lighting  a 

cigarette.  He  stroked  her  hair  and  begged:  "Please  go, 
Eve.  I  guess  I  haven't  got  very  good  control  over  my- 
self. Please.  You  make  me " 

"Oh  yes,  yes,  sure!  Blame  it  on  me!  Sure!  I  made 
you  let  me  put  on  a  kimono!  I'm  leading  your  pure  white 
shriveled  peanut  of  a  soul  into  temptation!  .  .  .  Don't 
you  ever  dare  speak  to  me  again!  Oh,  you — you " 

She  flounced  away. 

Carl  caught  her,  in  two  steps.  "See  here,  child,"  he 
said,  gravely,  "if  you  go  off  like  this  we'll  both  be  miser- 
able. .  .  .  You  remember  how  happy  we  were  driving  out 
to  the  old  plantation  at  Powhasset?" 

"O  Gawd!  won't  you  men  never  say  anything  original? 
Remember  it?  Of  course  I  remember  it!  What  do  you 
suppose  I  wore  that  little  branch  of  laurel  you  picked 
for  me,  wore  it  here,  here,  at  my  breast,  and  I  thought 
you'd  care  if  I  hid  it  here  where  there  wasn't  any  grease 
paint,  and  you  don't — you  don't  care — and  we  picnicked, 
and  I  sang  all  the  time  I  put  up  those  sandwiches  and 
hid  the  grape-fruit  in  the  basket  to  surprise  you " 

"O  darling  Eve,  I  don't  know  how  to  say  how  sorry  I 
am,  so  terribly  sorry  I've  started  things  going!  It  is  my 
fault.  But  can't  you  see  I've  got  to  stop  it  before  it's 
too  late,  just  for  that  reason?  Let's  be  chums  again." 

She  shook  her  head.  Her  hand  crept  to  his,  slid  over  it, 
drew  it  up  to  her  breast.  She  was  swaying  nearer  to 
him.  He  pulled  his  hand  free  and  fled  to  his  tent. 

Perhaps  his  fiercest  gibe  at  himself  was  that  he  had  had 
to  play  the  role  of  virgin  Galahad  rejecting  love,  which  is 
praised  in  books  and  ridiculed  in  clubs.  He  mocked  at 
his  sincere  desire  to  be  fair  to  Eve.  And  between  mock- 
eries he  strained  to  hear  her  moving  beyond  the  canvas 

144 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

i 

partition.     He  was  glad  when  the  bandsmen  came  lar- 
ruping home  from  the  dance. 

Next  day  she  went  out  of  her  way  to  be  chilly  to  him. 
He  did  not  woo  her  friendship.  He  had  resigned  from  the 
Great  Riley  Show,  and  he  was  going — going  anywhere, 
so  long  as  he  kept  going. 


CHAPTER  XV 

HE  had  been  a  jolly  mechanic  again,  in  denim  overalls 
and  jumper  and  a  defiant  black  skull-cap  with  long, 
shiny  vizor;  the  tender  of  the  motor-boat  fleet  at  an 
Ontario  summer  hotel.  One  day  he  had  looked  up, 
sweating  and  greasy,  to  see  Howard  Griffin,  of  Plato, 
parading  past  in  white  flannels.  He  had  muttered:  "I 
don't  want  Them  to  know  I've  just  been  bumming  around. 
I'll  go  some  place  else.  And  I'll  do  something  worth 
while."  Now  he  was  on  the  train  for  New  York,  medi- 
tating impersonally  on  his  uselessness,  considering  how 
free  of  moss  his  rolling  had  kept  him.  He  could  think  of 
no  particularly  masterful  plan  for  accumulating  moss.  If 
he  had  not  bought  a  ticket  through  to  New  York  he 
would  have  turned  back,  to  seek  a  position  in  one  of  the 
great  automobile  factories  that  now,  this  early  autumn 
of  1906,  were  beginning  to  distinguish  Detroit.  Well, 
he  had  enough  money  to  last  for  one  week  in  New  York. 
He  would  work  in  an  automobile  agency  there;  later 
he  would  go  to  Detroit,  and  within  a  few  years  be  president 
of  a  motor  company,  rich  enough  to  experiment  with  mo- 
tor-boats and  to  laugh  at  Howard  Griffin  or  any  other 
Platonian. 

So  he  sketched  his  conquering  entrance  into  New  York. 
Unfortunately  it  was  in  the  evening,  and,  having  fallen 
asleep  at  Poughkeepsie,  he  did  not  awake  till  a  brakeman 
shook  his  shoulder  at  the  Grand  Central  Station.  He  had 
heard  of  the  old  Grand  Union  Hotel,  and  drowsily,  with  the 
stuffy  nose  and  sandy  eyes  and  unclean  feeling  about  the 
teeth  that  overpower  one  who  sleeps  in  a  smoking-car,  he 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

staggered  across  to  the  hotel  and  spent  his  first  conquering 
night  in  filling  a  dollar  room  with  vulgar  sounds  of  over- 
weary slumber. 

But  in  the  morning,  when  he  stared  along  Forty-second 
Street;  when  he  breakfasted  at  a  Quids'  restaurant,  like 
a  gigantic  tiled  bath-room,  and  realized  that  the  buck- 
wheat cakes  were  New  York  buckwheats;  when  he 
sighted  the  noble  Times  Building  and  struck  out  for 
Broadway  (the  magic  name  that  promised  marble  palaces, 
even  if  it  provided  two-story  shacks);  when  he  bustled 
into  a  carburetor  agency  and  demanded  a  job — then  he 
found  the  gateway  of  wonder. 

But  he  did  not  find  a  job. 

Eight  nights  after  his  arrival  he  quietly  paid  his  bill 
at  the  hotel;  tipped  a  curly-headed  bell-boy;  checked 
his  baggage,  which  consisted  of  a  shirt,  a  razor,  and  an 
illustrated  catalogue  of  automobile  accessories;  put  his 
tooth-brush  in  his  pocket;  bought  an  evening  paper  in 
order  to  feel  luxurious;  and  walked  down  to  the  Charity 
Organization  Society,  with  ten  cents  in  his  pocket. 

In  the  Joint  Application  Bureau,  filled  with  desks  and 
filing-cabinets,  where  poor  men  cease  to  be  men  and 
become  Cases,  Carl  waited  on  a  long  bench  till  it  was  his 
turn  to  tell  his  troubles  to  a  keen,  kindly,  gray-bearded 
man  behind  a  roll-top  desk.  He  asked  for  work.  Work 
was,  it  seemed,  the  one  thing  the  society  could  not 
give.  He  received  a  ticket  to  the  Municipal  Lodging 
House. 

This  was  not  the  hygienic  hostelry  of  to-day,  but  a 
barracks  on  First  Avenue.  Carl  had  a  chunk  of  bread 
with  too  much  soda  in  it,  and  coffee  with  too  little  coffee 
in  it,  from  a  contemptuous  personage  in  a  white  jacket, 
who,  though  his  cuffs  were  grimy,  showed  plainly  that 
he  was  too  good  to  wait  on  bums.  Carl  leaned  his  elbows 
on  the  long  scrubbed  table  and  chewed  the  bread  of  charity 
sullenly,  resolving  to  catch  a  freight  next  day  and  get  out 
of  town. 

147; 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

He  slept  in  a  narrow  bunk  near  a  man  with  consump- 
tion. The  room  reeked  of  disinfectants  and  charity. 

The  East  Side  of  New  York.  A  whirlwind  of  noise 
and  smell  and  hovering  shadows.  The  jargon  of  Jewish 
matrons  in  brown  shawls  and  orthodox  wigs,  chaffering 
for  cabbages  and  black  cotton  stockings  and  gray  woolen 
undershirts  with  excitable  push-cart  proprietors  who  had 
beards  so  prophetic  that  it  was  startling  to  see  a  frivolous 
cigarette  amid  the  reverend  mane.  The  scent  of  fried 
fish  and  decaying  bits  of  kosher  meat,  and  hallways  as 
damnably  rotten  of  floor  as  they  were  profitable  to  New 
York's  nicest  circles.  The  tall  gloom  of  six-story  tene- 
ments that  made  a  prison  wall  of  dulled  yellow,  bristling 
with  bedding-piled  fire-escapes  and  the  curious  heads  of 
frowzy  women.  A  potpourri  of  Russian  signs,  Yiddish 
newspapers,  synagogues  with  six-pointed  gilt  stars, 
bakeries  with  piles  of  rye  bread  crawling  with  caraway- 
seeds,  shops  for  renting  wedding  finery  that  looked  as  if  it 
could  never  fit  any  one,  second-hand  furniture-shops  with 
folding  iron  beds,  a  filthy  baby  holding  a  baby  slightly 
younger  and  filthier,  mangy  cats  slinking  from  pile  to 
pile  of  rubbish,  and  a  withered  geranium  in  a  tin  can 
whose  label  was  hanging  loose  and  showed  rust-stains 
amid  the  dry  paste  on  its  back.  Everywhere  crowds  of 
voluble  Jews  in  dark  clothes,  and  noisily  playing  children 
that  catapulted  into  your  legs.  The  lunger-blocks  in 
which  we  train  the  victims  of  Russian  tyranny  to  appre- 
ciate our  freedom.  A  whirlwind  of  alien  ugliness  and  foul 
smells  and  incessant  roar  and  the  deathless  ambition  of 
young  Jews  to  know  Ibsen  and  syndicalism.  It  swamped 
the  courage  of  hungry  Carl  as  he  roamed  through  Riving- 
ton  Street  and  Essex  and  Hester,  vainly  seeking  jobs  from 
shopkeepers  too  poor  to  be  able  to  bathe. 

He  felt  that  he,  not  these  matter-of-fact  crowds,  was 
alien.  He  was  hungry  and  tired.  There  was  nothing 
heroic  to  do — just  go  hungry.  There  was  no  place 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

where  he  could  sit  down.  The  benches  of  the  tiny  hard- 
trodden  parks  were  full.  ...  If  he  could  sit  down,  if  he 
could  rest  one  little  hour,  he  would  be  able  to  go  and  find 
freight-yards,  where  there  would  be  the  clean  clang  of 
bells  and  rattle  of  trucks  instead  of  gabbled  Yiddish. 
Then  he  would  ride  out  into  the  country,  away  from  the 
brooding  shadows  of  this  town,  where  there  were  no 
separable  faces,  but  only  a  fog  of  ceaselessly  moving 
crowds.  .  .  . 

Late  that  night  he  stood  aimlessly  talking  to  a  hobo 
on  a  dirty  corner  of  the  Bowery,  where  the  early  Septem- 
ber rain  drizzled  through  the  gaunt  structure  of  the 
Elevated.  He  did  not  feel  the  hunger  so  much  now, 
but  he  was  meekly  glad  to  learn  from  his  new  friend,  the 
hobo,  that  in  one  more  hour  he  could  get  food  in  the  bread- 
line. He  felt  very  boyish,  and  would  have  confided  the 
fact  that  he  was  starving  to  any  woman,  to  any  one 
but  this  transcontinental  hobo,  the  tramp  royal,  trained 
to  scorn  hunger.  Because  he  was  one  of  them  he  watched 
incuriously  the  procession  of  vagrants,  in  coats  whose 
collars  were  turned  up  and  fastened  with  safety-pins 
against  the  rain.  The  vagrants  shuffled  rapidly  by,  their 
shoulders  hunched,  their  hands  always  in  their  trousers 
pockets,  their  shoe-heels  always  ground  down  and  muddy. 

And  incuriously  he  watched  a  saloon-keeper,  whose 
face  was  plastered  over  with  a  huge  mustache,  come  out 
and  hang  a  sign,  "Porter  wanted  in  A.M.,"  on  the  saloon 
door. 

As  he  slouched  away  to  join  the  bread-line,  a  black 
deuce  in  the  world's  discard,  Carl  was  wondering  how 
he  could  get  that  imperial  appointment  as  .porter  in  a 
Bowery  saloon.  He  almost  forgot  it  while  waiting  in  the 
bread-line,  so  occupied  was  he  in  hating  two  collegians 
who  watched  the  line  with  that  open  curiosity  which  nice, 
clean,  respectable  young  men  suppose  the  poor  never 
notice.  He  restrained  his  desire  to  go  over  and  quote 
Greek  at  them,  because  they  were  ignorant  and  not  to 

149 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

blame  for  being  sure  that  they  were  of  clay  superior  to 
any  one  in  a  bread-line.  And  partly  because  he  had 
forgotten  his  Greek. 

He  came  back  to  the  Bowery  briskly,  alone,  with  the 
manhood  of  a  loaf  of  bread  in  him.  He  was  going  to  get 
that  job  as  porter.  He  planned  his  campaign  as  a  poli- 
tician plans  to  become  a  statesman.  He  slipped  the  sign, 
"  Porter  wanted  in  A.M.,"  from  its  nail  and  hid  it  beneath 
his  coat.  He  tramped  the  block  all  night  and,  as  suspi- 
cious characters  always  do  to  avoid  seeming  suspicious, 
he  begged  a  match  from  a  policeman  who  was  keeping 
an  eye  on  him.  The  policeman  chatted  with  him  about 
baseball  and  advised  him  to  keep  away  from  liquor  and 
missions. 

At  5  A.M.  Carl  was  standing  at  the  saloon  door.  When 
the  bartender  opened  it  Carl  bounced  in,  slightly  dizzy, 
conscious  of  the  slime  of  mud  on  his  fraying  trouser-ends. 

The  saloon  had  an  air  of  cheap  crime  and  a  floor  cov- 
ered with  clotted  sawdust.  The  bar  was  a  slab  of  dark- 
brown  wood,  so  worn  that  semicircles  of  slivers  were 
showing.  The  nasty  gutter  was  still  filled  with  cigar- 
ends  and  puddles  of  beer  and  bits  of  free-lunch  cheese. 

"I  want  that  job  as  porter,"  said  Carl. 

"Oh,  you  do,  do  you?  Well,  you  wait  and  see  who  else 
comes  to  get  it." 

"Nobody  else  is  going  to  come." 

"How  do  you  know  they  ain't?" 

Carl  drew  the  sign  from  beneath  his  coat  and  care- 
fully laid  it  on  the  bar.  "That's  why." 

"Well,  you  got  nerve.  You  got  the  nerve  of  a  Repub- 
lican on  Fourteenth  Street,  like  the  fellow  says.  You 
must  want  it.  Well,  all  right,  I  guess  you  can  have  it  if 
the  boss  don't  kick." 

Carl  was  accepted  by  the  "boss,"  who  gave  him  a  quarter 
and  told  him  to  go  out  and  get  a  "regular  feed."  He 
hummed  over  breakfast.  He  had  been  accepted  again 
by  all  men  when  he  had  been  accepted  by  the  proprietor 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

of  a  Bowery  saloon.  He  was  going  to  hold  this  job,  no 
matter  what  happened.  The  rolling  stone  was  going  to 
gather  moss. 

For  three  months  Carl  took  seriously  the  dirtiest  things 
in  the  world.  He  worked  sixteen  hours  a  day  for  eight 
dollars  a  week,  cleaning  cuspidors,  scrubbing  the  floor, 
scattering  clean  sawdust,  cutting  the  more  rotten  portions 
off  the  free-lunch  meat.  As  he  slopped  about  with  half- 
frozen,  brittle  rags,  hoboes  pushed  him  aside  and  spat 
on  the  floor  he  had  just  cleaned. 

Of  his  eight  dollars  a  week  he  saved  four.  He  rented 
an  airshaft  bedroom  in  the  flat  of  a  Jewish  sweatshop 
worker  for  one  dollar  and  seventy-five  cents  a  week.  It 
was  occupied  daytimes  by  a  cook  in  an  all-night  res- 
taurant, who  had  taken  a  bath  in  1900  when  at  Coney 
Island  on  an  excursion  of  the  Pip  O'Gilligan  Associa- 
tion. The  room  was  unheated,  and  every  night  during 
January  Carl  debated  whether  to  go  to  bed  with  his 
shoes  on  or  off. 

The  sub-landlord's  daughter  was  a  dwarfish,  blotched- 
faced,  passionate  child  of  fifteen,  with  moist  eyes  and  very 
low-cut  waists  of  coarse  voile  (which  she  pronounced 
"voyle").  She  would  stop  Carl  in  the  dark  "railroad" 
hallway  and,  chewing  gum  rapidly,  chatter  about  the 
aisleman  at  Wanamacy's,  and  what  a  swell  time  there 
would  be  at  the  coming  ball  of  the  Thomas  J.  Monahan 
Literary  and  Social  Club,  tickets  twenty-five  cents  for 
lady  and  gent,  including  hat-check.  She  let  Carl  know 
that  she  considered  him  close-fisted  for  never  taking  her 
to  the  movies  on  Sunday  afternoons,  but  he  patted  her 
head  and  talked  to  her  like  a  big  brother  and  kept  himself 
from  noticing  that  she  had  clinging  hands  and  would  be 
rather  pretty,  and  he  bought  her  a  wholesome  woman's 
magazine  to  read — not  an  entirely  complete  solution  to 
the  problem  of  what  to  do  with  the  girl  whom  organized 
society  is  too  busy  to  nourish,  but  the  best  he  could 
contrive  just  then. 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Sundays,  when  he  was  free  for  part  of  the  day,  he  took 
his  book  of  recipes  for  mixed  drinks  to  the  reading-room 
of  the  Tompkins  Square  library  and  gravely  studied  them, 
for  he  was  going  to  be  a  bartender. 

Every  night  when  he  staggered  from  the  comparatively 
clean  air  of  the  street  into  the  fetid  chill  of  his  room  he 
asked  himself  why  he — son  of  Northern  tamaracks  and 
quiet  books — went  on  with  this  horrible  imitation  of 
living;  and  each  time  answered  himself  that,  whether 
there  was  any  real  reason  or  not,  he  was  going  to  make  good 
on  one  job  at  least,  and  that  the  one  he  held.  And 
admonished  himself  that  he  was  very  well  paid  for  a 
saloon  porter. 

If  Carl  had  never  stood  in  the  bread-line,  if  he  had  never 
been  compelled  to  clean  a  saloon  gutter  artistically,  in 
order  to  keep  from  standing  in  that  bread-line,  he  would 
surely  have  gone  back  to  the  commonplaceness  for  which 
every  one  except  Bone  Stillman  and  Henry  Frazer  had 
been  assiduously  training  him  all  his  life.  They  who  know 
how  naturally  life  runs  on  in  any  sphere  will  understand 
that  Carl  did  not  at  the  time  feel  that  he  was  debased. 
He  lived  twenty-four  hours  a  day  and  kept  busy,  with 
no  more  wonder  at  himself  than  is  displayed  by  the  pro- 
fessional burglar  or  the  man  who  devotes  all  his  youth 
to  learning  Greek  or  soldiering.  Nevertheless,  the  work 
itself  was  so  much  less  desirable  than  driving  a  car  or 
wandering  through  the  moonlight  with  Eve  L'Ewysse 
in  days  wonderful  and  lost  that,  to  endure  it,  to  conquer 
it,  he  had  to  develop  a  control  over  temper  and  speech 
and  body  which  was  to  stay  with  him  in  windy  mornings 
of  daring. 

Within  three  months  Carl  had  become  assistant  bar- 
keeper, and  now  he  could  save  eight  dollars  a  week.  He 
bought  a  couple  of  motor  magazines  and  went  to  one 
vaudeville  show  and  kept  his  sub-landlord's  daughter 
from  running  off  with  a  cadet,  wondering  how  soon  she 
would  do  it  in  any  case,  and  receiving  a  depressing  insight 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

into  the  efficiency  of  society  for  keeping  in  the  mire  most 
of  the  people  born  there. 

Three  months  later,  at  the  end  of  winter,  he  was  ready 
to  start  for  Panama. 

He  was  going  to  Panama  because  he  had  read  in  a 
Sunday  newspaper  of  the  Canal's  marvels  of  engineering 
and  jungle. 

He  had  avoided  making  friends.  There  was  no  one  to 
give  him  farewell  when  he  emerged  from  the  muck.  But 
he  had  one  task  to  perform — to  settle  with  the  Saloon 
Snob. 

Petey  McGuff  was  the  name  of  this  creature.  He  was 
an  oldish  and  wicked  man,  born  on  the  Bowery.  He  had 
been  a  heavy-weight  prize-fighter  in  the  days  of  John  L. 
Sullivan;  then  he  had  met  John,  and  been,  ever  since, 
an  honest  crook  who  made  an  excellent  living  by  conduct- 
ing a  boxing-school  in  which  the  real  work  was  done  by 
assistants.  He  resembled  a  hound  with  a  neat  black 
bow  tie,  and  he  drooled  tobacco-juice  down  his  big,  raw- 
looking,  moist,  bristly,  too-masculine  chin.  Every  eve- 
ning from  eleven  to  midnight  Petey  McGuff  sat  at  the 
round  table  in  the  mildewed  corner  at  the  end  of  the  bar, 
drinking  old-fashioned  whisky  cocktails  made  with  Bour- 
bon, playing  Canfield,  staring  at  the  nude  models  pasted  on 
the  milky  surface  of  an  old  mirror,  and  teasing  Carl. 

"Here,  boy,  come  'ere  an'  wipe  off  de  whisky  you 
spilled.  .  .  .  Come  on,  you  tissy-cat.  Get  on  de  job.  .  .  . 
You  look  like  Sunday-school  Harry.  Mamma's  little 
rosy-cheeked  boy.  .  .  .  Some  day  I'm  going  to  bust  your 
beezer.  Gawd!  it  makes  me  sick  to  sit  here  and  look  at 
dose  goily-goily  cheeks.  .  .  .  Come  'ere,  Lizzie,  an'  wipe 
dis  table  again.  On  de  jump,  daughter." 

Carl  held  himself  in.  Hundreds  of  times  he  snarled 
to  himself:  "I  wont  hit  him!  I  will  make  good  on  this 
job,  anyway."  He  created  a  grin  which  he  could  affix 
easily. 

Now  he  was  leaving.  He  had  proven  that  he  could 

153 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

hold  a  job;  had  answered  the  unspoken  criticisms  from 
Plato,  from  Chicago  garages,  from  the  Great  Riley  Show. 
For  the  first  time  since  he  had  deserted  college  he  had 
been  able  to  write  to  his  father,  to  answer  the  grim  car- 
penter's unspoken  criticisms  of  the  son  who  had  given  up 
his  chance  for  an  "education."  And  proudly  he  had  sent 
to  his  father  a  little  check.  He  had  a  beautiful  new 
fifteen-dollar  suit  of  blue  serge  at  home.  In  his  pocket 
was  his  ticket — steerage  by  the  P.  R.  R.  line  to  Colon — 
and  he  would  be  off  for  bluewater  next  noon.  His  feet 
danced  behind  the  bar  as  he  filled  schooners  of  beer  and 
scraped  off  their  foam  with  a  celluloid  ruler.  He  saw 
himself  in  Panama,  with  a  clean  man's  job,  talking  to 
cosmopolitan  engineers  against  a  background  of  green- 
and-scarlet  jungle.  And,  oh  yes,  he  was  going  to  beat 
Petey  McGuff  that  evening,  and  get  back  much  of  the 
belligerent  self-respect  which  he  had  been  drawing  off 
into  schooners  with  the  beer. 

Old  Petey  rolled  in  at  two  minutes  past  eleven,  warmed 
his  hands  at  the  gas-stove,  poked  disapprovingly  at  the 
pretzels  on  the  free-lunch  counter,  and  bawled  at  Carl: 
"Hey,  keep  away  from  dat  cash-register!  Wipe  dem 
goilish  tears  away,  will  yuh,  Agnes,  and  bring  us  a  little 
health-destroyer  and  a  couple  matches." 

Carl  brought  a  whisky  cocktail. 

"Where's  de  matches,  you  tissy-cat?" 

Carl  wiped  his  hands  on  his  apron  and  beamed:  "Well, 
so  the  old  soak  is  getting  too  fat  and  lazy  to  reach  over 
on  the  bar  and  get  his  own!  You'll  last  quick  now!" 

"Aw,  is  dat  so!  ...  For  de  love  of  Mike,  d'yuh  mean 
to  tell  me  Lizzie  is  talking  back?  Whadda  yuh  know 
about  dat!  Whadda  yuh  know  about  dat!  You'll  get 
sick  on  us  here,  foist  t'ing  we  know.  Where  was  yuh 
hoited?" 

Petey  McGufFs  smile  was  absolutely  friendly.  It  made 
Carl  hesitate,  but  it  had  become  one  of  the  principles  of 
cosmic  ethics  that  he  had  to  thump  Petey,  and  he  growled : 

154 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"I'll  give  you  all  the  talking  back  you  want,  you  big  stiff. 
I'm  getting  through  to-night.     I'm  going  to  Panama." 

"No,  straight,  is  dat  straight?" 

"That's  what  I  said." 

"Well,  dat's  fine,  boy.  I  been  watching  yuh,  and  I 
sees  y'  wasn't  cut  out  to  be  no  saloon  porter.  I  made  a 
little  bet  with  meself  you  was  ejucated.  Why,  y'r  cuffs 
ain't  even  doity — not  very  doity.  Course  you  kinda  need 
a  shave,  but  dem  little  blond  hairs  don't  show  much.  / 
seen  you  was  a  gentleman,  even  if  de  bums  didn't.  You're 
too  good  t'  be  a  rum-peddler.  Glad  y're  going,  boy, 
mighty  glad.  Sit  down.  Tell  us  about  it.  We'll  miss 
yuh  here.  I  was  just  saying  th'  other  night  to  Mike 
here  dere  ain't  one  feller  in  a  hundred  could  'a'  stood  de 
kiddin'  from  an  old  he-one  like  me  and  kep*  his  mout' 
shut  and  grinned  and  said  nawthin'  to  nobody.  Dat's 
w'at  wins  fights.  But,  say,  boy,  I'll  miss  yuh,  I  sure  will. 
I  get  to  be  kind  of  lonely  as  de  boys  drop  off — like  boozers 
always  does.  Oh,  hell,  I  won't  spill  me  troubles  like  an 
old  tissy-cat.  ...  So  you're  going  to  Panama?  I  want 
yuh  to  sit  down  and  tell  me  about  it.  Whachu  taking, 
boy?" 

"Just  a  cigar.  .  .  .  I'll  miss  you,  too,  Petey.  Tell  you 
what  I'll  do.  I'll  send  you  some  post-cards  from  Panama." 

Next  noon  as  the  S.S.  Panama  pulled  out  of  her  ice- 
lined  dock  Carl  saw  an  old  man  shivering  on  the  wharf  and 
frantically  waving  good-by — Petey  McGuff. 
'n 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  S.S.  Panama  had    passed  Watling's    Island  and 
steamed  into  story -land.     On    the  white  -  scrubbed 
deck  aft  of  the  wheel-house  Carl  sat  with  his  friends  of  the 
steerage — sturdy  men  all,  used  to  open  places;    old  Ed, 
the  rock-driller,  long,  Irish,  huge-handed,  irate,  kindly; 
Harry,  the  young  mechanic  from  Cleveland.     Ed  and  an 
oiler  were  furiously  debating  about  the  food  aboard: 
"Aw,  it's  rotten,  all  of  it." 

"Look  here,  Ed,  how  about  the  chicken  they  give  the 
steerage  on  Sunday?" 

"Chicken?  I  didn't  see  no  chicken.  I  see  some  sea- 
gull, though.  No  wonder  they  ain't  no  more  sea-gulls 
following  us.  They  shot  'em  and  cooked  'em  on  us." 

"Say,"  mused  Harry,  "makes  me  think  of  when  I  was 
ship-building  in  Philly — no,  it  was  when  I  was  broke  in 
K.  C— and  a  guy- 
Carl  smiled  in  content,  exulting  in  the  talk  of  the  men 
of  the  road,  exulting  in  his  new  blue  serge  suit,  his  new 
silver-gray  tie  with  no  smell  of  the  saloon  about  it,  finger- 
nails that  were  growing  pink  again — and  the  sunset  that 
made  glorious  his  petty  prides.  A  vast  plane  of  unrip- 
pling  plum-colored  sea  was  set  with  mirror-like  pools 
where  floated  tree-branches  so  suffused  with  light  that  the 
glad  heart  blessed  them.  His  first  flying-fish  leaped 
silvery  from  silver  sea,  and  Carl  cried,  almost  aloud, 
"This  is  what  I've  been  wanting  all  my  life!" 

Aloud,  to  Harry:  "Say,  what's  it  like  in  Kansas?  I'm 
going  down  through  there  some  day."  He  spoke  harshly. 

156 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

But  the  real  Carl  was  robed  in  light  and  the  murmurous 
wake  of  evening,  with  the  tropics  down  the  sky-line. 

Lying  in  his  hot  steerage  bunk,  stripped  to  his  under- 
shirt, Carl  peered  through  the  "state-room"  window  to 
the  swishing  night  sea,  conscious  of  the  rolling  of  the  boat, 
of  the  engines  shaking  her,  of  bolts  studding  the  white 
iron  wall,  of  life-preservers  over  his  head,  of  stokers 
singing  in  the  gangway  as  they  dumped  the  clinkers 
overboard.  The  Panama  was  pounding  on,  on,  on,  and 
he  rejoiced,  "This  is  just  what  I've  wanted,  always." 

They  are  creeping  in  toward  the  wharf  at  Colon.  He  is 
seeing  Panama!  First  a  point  of  palms,  then  the  hospital, 
the  red  roofs  of  the  I.  C.  C.  quarters  at  Cristobal,  and 
negroes  on  the  sun-blistered  wharf. 

At  last  he  is  free  to  go  ashore  in  wonderland — a  medley 
of  Colon  and  Cristobal,  Panama  and  the  Canal  Zone  of 
1907;  Spiggoty  policemen  like  monkeys  chattering  bad 
Spanish,  and  big,  smiling  Canal  Zone  policemen  in  khaki, 
with  the  air  of  soldiers;  Jamaica  negroes  with  conical 
heads  and  brown  Barbados  negroes  with  Cockney  ac- 
cents; English  engineers  in  lordly  pugrees,  and  tourists 
from  New  England  who  seem  servants  of  their  own  tor- 
toise-shell spectacles;  comfortable  ebon  mammies  with 
silver  bangles  and  kerchiefs  of  stabbing  scarlet,  dressed 
in  starched  pink-and-blue  gingham,  vending  guavas  and 
green  Toboga  Island  pineapples.  Carl  gapes  at  Pana- 
manian nuns  and  Chilean  consuls,  French  peasant  laborers 
and  indignant  Irish  foremen  and  German  concessionaries 
with  dueling  scars  and  high  collars.  Gold  Spanish  signs 
and  Spiggoty  money  and  hotels  with  American  cuspidors 
and  job-hunters;  tin  roofs  and  arcades;  shops  open  to 
the  street  in  front,  but  mysterious  within,  giving  glimpses 
of  the  canny  Chinese  proprietors  smoking  tiny  pipes. 
Trains  from  towns  along  the  Canal,  and  sometimes  the 
black  funeral-car,  bound  for  Monkey  Hill  Cemetery. 

157 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Gambling-houses  where  it  is  considered  humorous  to  play 
"Where  Is  My  Wandering  Boy  To-night  ?"  on  the  phono- 
graph while  wandering  boys  sit  at  poker;  and  less  cleanly 
places,  named  after  the  various  states.  Negro  wenches 
in  yellow  calico  dancing  to  fiddled  tunes  older  than  voodoo; 
Indian  planters  coming  sullenly  in  with  pale-green  ba- 
nanas; memories  of  the  Spanish  Main  and  Morgan's 
raid,  of  pieces  of  eight  and  cutlasses  ho !  Capes  of  cocoanut 
palms  running  into  a  welter  of  surf;  huts  on  piles  streaked 
with  moss,  round  whose  bases  land-crabs  scuttle  with  a 
dry  rattling  that  carries  far  in  the  hot,  moist,  still  air, 
and  suggests  the  corpses  of  disappeared  men  found  half 
devoured. 

Then,  for  contrast,  the  transplanted  North,  with  its 
seriousness  about  the  Service;  the  American  avenues  and 
cool  breezes  of  Cristobal,  where  fat,  bald  chiefs  of  the 
I.  C.  C.  drive  pompously  with  political  guests  who,  in 
1907,  are  still  incredulous  about  the  success  of  the  military 
socialism  of  the  Canal,  and  where  wives  from  Oklahoma 
or  Boston,  seated  in  Grand  Rapids  golden-oak  rockers 
on  the  screened  porches  of  bungalows,  talk  of  hats,  and 
children,  and  mail-orders,  and  cards,  and  The  Colonel,  and 
malarial  fever,  and  Chautauqua,  and  the  Culebra  slide. 

Colon!  A  kaleidoscope  of  crimson  and  green  and 
dazzling  white,  warm-hued  peoples  and  sizzling  roofs, 
with  echoes  from  the  high  endeavor  of  the  Canal  and 
whispers  from  the  unknown  Bush;  drenched  with  sudden 
rain  like  escaping  steam,  or  languid  under  the  desert  glare 
of  the  sky,  where  hangs  a  gyre  of  buzzards  whose  slow 
circles  are  stiller  than  death  and  calmer  than  wisdom. 

"Lord!"  sighs  Carl  Ericson  from  Joralemon,  "this  is 
what  I've  wanted  ever  since  I  was  a  kid." 

At  Pedro  Miguel,  which  the  Canal  employees  always 
called  "Peter  McGill,"  he  found  work,  first  as  an  un- 
official time-keeper;  presently,  after  examinations,  as  a 
stationery  engineer  on  the  roll  of  the  I.  C.  C.  Within 

158 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

a  month  he  showed  no  signs  of  his  Bowery  experiences 
beyond  a  shallow  hollow  in  his  smooth  cheeks.  He  lived 
in  quarters  like  a  college  dormitory,  communistic  and 
jolly,  littered  with  shoes  and  cube-cut  tobacco  and  college 
banners;  clean  youngsters  dropping  in  for  an  easy  chat — 
and  behind  it  all,  the  mystery  of  the  Bush.  His  room- 
mate, a  conductor  on  the  P.  R.  R.,  was  a  globe-trotter, 
and  through  him  Carl  met  the  Adventurers,  whom  he  had 
been  questing  ever  since  he  had  run  away  from  Oscar 
Ericson's  woodshed.  There  was  a  young  engineer  from 
Boston  Tech.,  who  swore  every  morning  at  7.07  (when 
it  rained  boiling  water  as  enthusiastically  as  though  it  had 
never  done  such  a  thing  before)  that  he  was  going  to 
Chihuahua,  mining.  There  was  Cock-eye  Corbett,  an  ex- 
sailor,  who  was  immoral  and  a  Lancashireman,  and  knew 
more  about  blackbirding  and  copra  and  Kanakas,  and 
the  rum-holes  from  Nagasaki  to  Mombasa,  than  it  is 
healthy  for  a  civil  servant  to  know. 

Every  Sunday  a  sad-faced  man  with  ash-colored  hair  and 
bony  fingers,  who  had  been  a  lieutenant  in  the  Peruvian 
navy,  a  teacher  in  St.  John's  College,  China,  and  a  sub- 
contractor for  railroad  construction  in  Montana,  and 
who  was  now  a  minor  clerk  in  the  cool,  lofty  offices  of  the 
Materials  and  Supplies  Department,  came  over  from 
Colon,  relaxed  in  a  tilted-back  chair,  and  fingered  the 
Masonic  charm  on  his  horsehair  watch-guard,  while  he 
talked  with  the  P.  R.  R.  conductor  and  the  others  about 
ruby-hunting  and  the  Relief  of  Peking,  and  Where  is 
Hector  Macdonald?  and  Is  John  Orth  dead?  and  Shall 
we  try  to  climb  Chimborazo?  and  Creussot  guns  and  pig- 
sticking and  Swahili  tribal  lore.  These  were  a  few  of  the 
topics  regarding  which  he  had  inside  information.  The 
others  drawled  about  various  strange  things  which  make 
a  man  discontented  and  bring  him  no  good. 

Carl  was  full  member  of  the  circle  because  of  his  tales 
of  the  Bowery  and  the  Great  Riley  Show,  and  because  he 
pretended  to  be  rather  an  authority  on  motors  for  dirigi- 

159 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

bles,  about  which  he  read  in  Aeronautics  at  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
reading-room.  It  is  true  that  at  this  time,  early  1907, 
the  Wrights  were  still  working  in  obscurity,  unknown 
even  in  their  own  Dayton,  though  they  had  a  completely 
successful  machine  stowed  away;  and  as  yet  Glenn  Curtiss 
had  merely  developed  a  motor  for  Captain  Baldwin's 
military  dirigible.  But  Langley  and  Maxim  had  en- 
deavored to  launch  power-driven,  heavier-than-air  ma- 
chines; lively  Santos  Dumont  had  flipped  about  the 
Eiffel  Tower  in  his  dirigible,  and  actually  raised  himself 
from  the  ground  in  a  ponderous  aeroplane;  and  in  May, 
1907,  a  sculptor  named  Delagrange  flew  over  six  hundred 
feet  in  France.  Various  crank  inventors  were  "solving 
the  problem  of  flight"  every  day.  Man  was  fluttering  on 
the  edge  of  his  earthy  nest,  ready  to  plunge  into  the  air. 
Carl  was  able  to  make  technical-sounding  predictions 
which  caught  the  imaginations  of  the  restless  children. 

The  adventurers  kept  moving.  The  beach-combing 
ex-sailor  said  that  he  was  starting  for  Valparaiso,  started 
for  San  Domingo,  and  landed  in  Tahiti,  whence  he  sent 
Carl  one  post-card,  worded,  "What  price  T.  T.?"  The 
engineer  from  Boston  Tech.  kept  his  oath  about  mining 
in  Chihauhua.  He  got  the  appointment  as  assistant 
superintendent  of  the  Tres  Reyes  mine — and  he  took 
Carl  with  him. 

Carl  reached  Mexico  and  breathed  the  air  of  high-lying 
desert  and  hill.  He  found  rare  days,  purposeless  and 
wonderful  as  the  voyages  of  ancient  Norse  Ericsens;  days 
of  learning  Spanish  and  sitting  quietly  balancing  a  .32—20 
Marlin,  waiting  for  bandits  to  attack;  the  joy  of  repairing 
machinery  and  helping  to  erect  a  new  crusher,  nursing 
peons  with  broken  legs,  and  riding  cow-ponies  down  black 
mountain  trails  at  night  under  an  exhilarating  splendor 
of  stars.  It  never  seemed  to  him  that  the  machinery 
desecrated  the  mountains'  stern  grandeur. 

Stolen  hours  he  gave  to  the  building  of  box-kites  with 

1 60 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

cambered  wings,  after  rapturously  learning,  in  the  autumn 
of  1908,  that  in  August  a  lanky  American  mechanic 
named  Wilbur  Wright  had  startled  the  world  by  flying  an 
aeroplane  many  miles  publicly  in  France;  that  before 
this,  on  July  4,  1908,  another  Yankee  mechanic,  Glenn 
Curtiss,  had  covered  nearly  a  mile,  for  the  Scientific 
American  trophy,  after  a  series  of  trials  made  in  company 
with  Alexander  Graham  Bell,  J.  A.  D.  McCurdy,  "Casey" 
Baldwin,  and  Augustus  Post. 

He  might  have  gone  on  until  death,  dealing  with  ex- 
citable greasers  and  hysterical  machinery,  but  for  the 
coming  of  a  new  mine  superintendent — one  of  those 
Englishmen,  stolid,  red-mustached,  pipe-smoking,  eye- 
brow-lifting, who  at  first  seem  beefily  dull,  but  prove  to 
have  known  every  one  from  George  Moore  to  Marconi. 
He  inspected  Carl  hundreds  of  times,  then  told  him  that 
the  period  had  come  when  he  ought  to  attack  a  city, 
conquer  it,  build  up  a  reputation  cumulatively;  that 
he  needed  a  contrast  to  Platonians  and  Bowery  bums  and 
tropical  tramps,  and  even  to  his  beloved  engineers. 

"You  can  do  everything  but  order  a  petit  diner  d  deux, 
but  you  must  learn  to  do  that,  too.  Go  make  ten  thou- 
sand pounds  and  study  Pall  Mall  and  the  boulevards,  and 
then  come  back  to  us  in  Mexico.  I'll  be  sorry  to  have  you 
go — with  your  damned  old  silky  hair  like  a  woman's  and 
your  wink  when  Guittrez  comes  up  here  to  threaten  us — 
but  don't  let  the  hinterland  enslave  you  too  early." 

A  month  later,  in  January,  1909,  aged  twenty-three 
and  a  half,  Carl  was  steaming  out  of  El  Paso  for  Cali- 
fornia, with  one  thousand  dollars  in  savings,  a  beautiful 
new  Stetson  hat,  and  an  ambition  to  build  up  a  motor 
business  in  San  Francisco.  As  the  desert  sky  swam  with 
orange  light  and  a  white-browed  woman  in  the  seat  behind 
him  hummed  Musetta's  song  from  "La  Boheme"  he  was 
homesick  for  the  outlanders,  whom  he  was  deserting  that 
he  might  stick  for  twenty  years  in  one  street  and  grub 
out  a  hundred  thousand  dollars. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

ON  a  grassy  side-street  of  Oakland,  California,  was 
"Jones  &  Ericson's  Garage:  Gasoline  and  Repairs: 
Motor  Cycles  and  Bicycles  for  Rent:  Oakland  Agents  for 
Bristow  Magnetos." 

It  was  perhaps  the  cleverest  garage  in  Oakland  and 
Berkeley  for  the  quick  repairing  of  motor-cycles;  and  new- 
ly wed  owners  of  family  runabouts  swore  that  Carl  Ericson 
could  make  a  carburetor  out  of  a  tomato-can,  and  even 
be  agreeable  when  called  on  for  repairs  at  2  A.M.  He 
had  doubled  old  Jones's  business  during  the  nine  months 
— February  to  November,  1909 — that  they  had  been  as- 
sociated. 

Carl  believed  that  he  thought  of  nothing  but  work  and 
the  restaurants  and  theaters  of  civilization.  No  more 
rolling  for  him  until  he  had  gathered  moss!  He  played 
that  he  was  a  confirmed  business  man.  The  game  had 
hypnotized  him  for  nearly  a  year.  He  whistled  as  he 
cleaned  plugs,  and  glanced  out  at  the  eucalyptus-trees 
and  the  sunny  road,  without  wanting  to  run  away.  But 
just  to-day,  just  this  glorious  rain-cleansed  November 
day,  with  high  blue  skies  and  sunlight  on  the  feathery 
pepper-trees,  he  was  going  to  sneak  away  from  work  and 
have  a  celebration  all  by  himself. 

He  was  going  down  to  San  Mateo  to  see  his  first  flying- 
machine! 

November,  1909.  Bleriot  had  crossed  the  English 
Channel;  McCurdy  had,  in  March,  1909,  calmly  pegged 
off  sixteen  miles  in  the  "Silver  Dart"  biplane;  Paulhan 
had  gone  eighty-one  miles,  and  had  risen  to  the  incredible 

163 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

height  of  five  hundred  feet,  to  be  overshadowed  by 
Orville  Wright's  sixteen  hundred  feet;  Glenn  Curtiss  had 
won  the  Gordon  Bennett  cup  at  Rheims. 

California  was  promising  to  be  in  the  van  of  aviation. 
She  was  remembering  that  her  own  Montgomery  had  been 
one  of  the  pioneers.  Los  Angeles  was  planning  a  giant 
meet  for  January.  A  dozen  cow-pasture  aviators  were 
taking  credulous  young  reporters  aside  and  confiding 
that  next  day,  or  next  week,  or  at  latest  next  month, 
they  would  startle  the  world  by  ascending  in  machines 
"on  entirely  new  and  revolutionary  principles,  on  which 
they  had  been  working  for  ten  years."  Sometimes  it  was 
for  eight  years  they  had  been  working.  But  always  they 
remarked  that  "the  model  from  which  the  machine  will 
be  built  has  flown  perfectly  in  the  presence  of  some  of  the 
most  prominent  men  in  the  locality."  These  machines 
had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  mysterious  qualities  of 
gyroscopes  and  helicopters. 

Now,  Dr.  Josiah  Bagby,  the  San  Francisco  physician 
and  oil-burning-marine-engine  magnate,  had  really  brought 
three  genuine  Bleriot  monoplanes  from  France,  with 
Carmeau,  graduate  of  the  Bleriot  school  and  licensed 
French  aviator,  for  working  pilot;  and  was  experi- 
menting with  them  at  San  Mateo,  near  San  Francisco, 
where  the  grandsons  of  the  Forty-niners  play  polo.  It 
had  been  rumored  that  he  would  open  a  school  for 
pilots  and  build  Bleriot-type  monoplanes  for  the  Amer- 
ican market. 

Carl  had  lain  awake  for  an  hour  the  night  before, 
picturing  the  wonder  of  flight  that  he  hoped  to  see.  He 
rose  early,  put  on  his  politest  garments,  and  informed 
grumpy  old  Jones  that  he  was  off  for  a  frolic — he  wasn't 
sure,  he  said,  whether  he  would  get  drunk  or  get  married. 
He  crossed  the  bay,  glad  of  the  sea-gulls,  the  glory  of 
Mt.  Tamalpais,  and  San  Francisco's  hill  behind  fairy 
hill.  He  consumed  a  Pacific  sundae,  with  a  feeling  of 
holiday,  and  hummed  "Mandalay."  On  the  trolley  to 

163 


THE   TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

San  Mateo  he  read  over  and  over  the  newspaper  accounts 
of  Bagby's  monoplanes. 

Walking  through  San  Mateo,  Carl  swung  his  cocky 
green  hat  and  scanned  the  sky  for  aircraft.  He  saw  none. 
But  as  he  tramped  out  on  the  flying-field  he  began  to 
run  at  the  sight  of  two  wide,  cambered  wings,  rounded 
at  the  ends  like  the  end  of  one's  thumb,  attached  to  a 
fragile  long  body  of  open  framework.  Men  were  gathered 
about  it.  A  man  with  a  short,  crisp  beard  and  a  tight 
woolen  toboggan-cap  was  seated  in  the  body,  the  wings 
stretching  on  either  side  of  him.  He  scratched  his  beard 
and  gesticulated.  A  mechanic  revolved  the  propeller,  and 
the  unmufHed  motor  burst  out  with  a  trrrrrrrr  whose 
music  rocked  Carl's  heart.  Black  smoke  hurled  back 
along  the  machine.  The  draught  tore  at  the  hair  of  two 
men  crouched  on  the  ground  holding  the  tail.  They  let  go. 
The  monoplane  ran  forward  along  the  ground,  and  suddenly 
was  off  it,  a  foot  up,  ten  feet  up — really  flying.  Carl 
could  see  the  aviator  calmly  staring  ahead,  working  his 
arms,  as  the  machine  turned  and  slipped  away  over 
distant  trees. 

His  first  impression  of  an  aeroplane  in  the  air  had 
nothing  to  do  with  birds  or  dragon-flies  or  the  miracle  of 
it,  because  he  was  completely  absorbed  in  an  impression 
of  Carl  Ericson,  which  he  expressed  after  this  wise: 

"  I — am — going — to — be — an — aviator  P* 

And  later,  "Yes,  that's  what  I've  always  wanted." 
•  He  joined  the  group  in  front  of  the  hangar-tent.  Work- 
men were  hammering  on  wooden  sheds  back  of  it.  He 
recognized  the  owner,  Dr.  Bagby,  from  his  pictures:  a 
lean  man  of  sixty  with  a  sallow  complexion,  a  gray  mus- 
tache like  a  rat-tail,  a  broad,  black  countrified  slouch- 
hat  on  the  back  of  his  head,  a  gray  sack-suit  which  would 
have  been  respectable  but  unfashionable  at  any  period 
whatsoever.  He  looked  like  a  country  lawyer  who  had 
served  two  terms  in  the  state  legislature.  His  shoes 
were  black,  but  not  blackened,  and  had  no  toe-caps — the 

164 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

comfortable  shoes  of  an  oldish  man.  He  was  tapping 
his  teeth  with  a  thin  corded  forefinger  and  remarking  in  a 
monotonous  voice  to  a  Mexican  youth  plump  and  polite 
and  well  dressed,  "Wel-1-1-1,  Tony,  I  guess  those  plugs 
were  better;  I  guess  those  plugs  were  better.  Heh?" 
Bagby  turned  to  the  others,  marveled  at  them  as  if 
trying  to  remember  who  they  were,  and  said,  slowly, 
"I  guess  those  plugs  were  all  right.  Heh?" 

The  monoplane  was  returning,  for  a  time  apparently 
not  moving,  like  a  black  mark  painted  on  the  great  blue 
sky;  then  soaring  overhead,  the  sharply  cut  outlines 
clear  as  a  pen-and-ink  drawing;  then  landing,  bouncing 
on /the  slightly  uneven  ground. 

As  the  French  aviator  climbed  out,  Dr.  Bagby's  sad 
face  brightened  and  he  suggested:  "Those  plugs  went 
better,  Munseer.  Heh?  I've  been  thinking.  Maybe 
you  been  giving  her  too  rich  a  mixture." 

While  they  were  wiping  the  Gnome  engine  Carl  shyly 
approached  Dr.  Bagby.  He  felt  frightfully  an  outsider; 
wondered  if  he  could  ever  be  intimate  with  the  magician 
as  was  the  plump  Mexican  youth  they  called  "Tony." 
He  said  "Uh"  once  or  twice,  and  blurted,  "I  want  to  be 
an  aviator." 

"Yes,  yes,"  said  Dr.  Bagby,  gently,  glancing  away 
from  Carl  to  the  machine.  He  went  over,  twanged  a 
supporting-wire,  and  seemed  to  remember  that  some  one 
had  spoken  to  him.  He  returned  to  the  fevered  Carl, 
walking  sidewise,  staring  all  the  while  at  the  resting 
monoplane,  so  efficient,  yet  so  quiet  now  and  slender  and 
feminine.  "Yes,  yes.  So  you'd  like  to  be  an  aviator. 

So  you'd  like— like (Hey,  boy,  don't  touch  that!) 

to  be  an  aviator.  Yes,  yes.  They  all  would,  m'  boy. 

They  all  would.  Well,  maybe  you  can  be,  some  day. 
Maybe  you  can  be.  .  .  .  Some  day." 

"I  mean  now.  Right  away.  Heard  you  were  going 
t'  start  a  school.  Want  to  join." 

"Hm,  hm,"  sighed  Dr.  Bagby,  tapping  his  teeth, 

165 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

jingling  his  heavy  gold  watch-chain,  brushing  a  trail  of 
cigar-ashes  from  a  lapel,  then  staring  abstractedly  at 
Carl,  who  was  turning  his  hat  swiftly  round  and  round,  so 
flushed  of  cheek,  so  excited  of  eye,  that  he  seemed  twenty 
instead  of  twenty-four.  "Yes,  yes,  so  you'd  like  to  join. 
Tst.  But  that  would  cost  you  five  hundred  dollars,  you 
know." 

"Right!" 

"Well,  you  go  talk  to  Munseer  about  it;  Munseer 
Carmeau.  He  is  a  very  good  aviator.  He  is  a  licensed 
aviator.  He  knows  Henry  Farman.  He  studied  under 
Bleriot.  He  is  the  boss  here.  I'm  just  the  poor  old 
fellow  that  stands  around.  Sometimes  Munseer  takes 
me  up  for  a  little  ride  in  our  machine;  sometimes  he  takes 
me  up;  but  he  is  the  boss.  He  is  the  boss,  my  friend; 
you'll  have  to  see  him."  And  Dr.  Bagby  walked  away, 
apparently  much  discouraged  about  life. 

Carl  was  not  discouraged  about  life.  He  swore  that 
now  he  would  be  an  aviator  even  if  he  had  to  go  to  Dayton 
or  Hammondsport  or  France. 

He  returned  to  Oakland.  He  sold  his  share  in  the 
garage  for  $1,150. 

Before  the  end  of  January  he  was  enrolled  as  a  student 
in  the  Bagby  School  of  Aviation  and  Monoplane  Building. 

On  an  impulse  he  wrote  of  his  wondrous  happiness  to 
Gertie  Cowles,  but  he  tore  up  the  letter.  Then  proudly 
he  wrote  to  his  father  that  the  lost  boy  had  found  himself. 
For  the  first  time  in  all  his  desultory  writing  of  home- 
letters  he  did  not  feel  impelled  to  defend  himself. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

\ 

CRUDE  were  the  surroundings  where  Carmeau  turned 
out  some  of  the  best  monoplane  pilots  America 
will  ever  see.  There  were  two  rude  shed-hangars  in  which 
they  kept  the  three  imported  Bleriots — a  single-seat 
racer  of  the  latest  type,  a  Bleriot  XII.  passenger-carrying 
machine  with  the  seat  under  the  plane,  and  "P'tite 
Marie,"  the  school  machine,  which  they  usually  kept 
throttled  down  to  'four  hundred  or  five  hundred,  but  in 
which  Carmeau  made  such  spirited  flights  as  the  one  Carl 
had  first  witnessed.  Back  of  the  hangars  was  the  work- 
shop, which  had  little  architecture,  but  much  machinery. 
Here  the  pupils  were  building  two  Bleriot-type  machines, 
and  trying  to  build  an  eight-cylinder  V  motor.  All  these 
things  had  Bagby  given  for  the  good  of  the  game,  expect- 
ing no  profit  in  return.  He  was  one  of  the  real  martyrs 
of  aviation,  this  sapless,  oldish  man,  never  knowing  the 
joy  of  the  air,  yet  devoting  a  lifetime  of  ability  to  helping 
man  sprout  wings  and  become  superman. 

His  generosity  did  not  extend  to  living-quarters.  Most 
of  the  students  lived  at  the  hangars  and  dined  on  Ham- 
burg sandwiches,  fried  eggs,  and  Mexican  enchiladas, 
served  at  a  lunch-wagon  anchored  near  the  field.  That 
lunch-wagon  was  their  club.  Here,  squatted  on  high 
stools,  treating  one  another  to  ginger-ale,  they  argued 
over  torque  and  angles  of  incidence  and  monoplanes  vs. 
biplanes.  Except  for  two  unpopular  aristocrats  who 
found  boarding-houses  in  San  Mateo,  they  slept  in  the 
hangars,  in  their  overalls,  sprawled  on  mattresses  covered 
with  horse-blankets.  It  was  bed  at  eight-thirty.  At  four 
or  five  Carmeau  would  crawl  out,  scratch  his  beard,  start 

167 


THE   TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

a  motor,  and  set  every  neighborhood  dog  howling.  The 
students  would  gloomily  clump  over  to  the  lunch-wagon 
for  a  ham-and-egg  breakfast.  The  first  flights  began 
at  dawn,  if  the  day  was  clear.  At  eight,  when  the  wind 
was  coming  up,  they  would  be  heard  in  the  workshop,  ad- 
justing and  readjusting,  machining  down  bearings,  testing 
wing  strength,  humming  and  laughing  and  busy;  a  life 
of  gasoline  and  hammers  and  straining  attempts  to  get 
balance  exactly  right;  a  happy  life  of  good  fellows  and  the 
achievements  of  machinery  and  preparation  for  daring  the 
upper  air;  a  life  of  very  ordinary  mechanics  and  of  sheer 
romance ! 

It  is  a  grievous  heresy  that  aviation  is  most  romantic 
when  the  aviator  is  portrayed  as  a  young  god  of  noble 
rank  and  a  collar  high  and  spotless,  carelessly  driving  a 
transatlantic  machine  of  perfect  efficiency.  The  real 
romance  is  that  a  perfectly  ordinary  young  man,  the  sort 
of  young  man  who  cleans  your  car  at  the  garage,  a  prosaic- 
ally real  young  man  wearing  overalls  faded  to  a  thin  blue, 
splitting  his  infinitives,  and  frequently  having  for  idol  a 
bouncing  ingenue,  should,  in  a  rickety  structure  of  wood 
and  percale,  be  able  to  soar  miles  in  the  air  and  fulfil  the 
dream  of  all  the  creeping  ages. 

In  English  and  American  fiction  there  are  now  nearly 
as  many  aeroplanes  as  rapiers  or  roses.  The  fictional 
aviators  are  society  amateurs,  wearers  of  evening  clothes, 
frequenters  of  The  Club,  journalists  and  civil  engineers 
and  lordlings  and  international  agents  and  gentlemen 
detectives,  who  drawl,  "Oh  yes,  I  fly  a  bit — new  sensa- 
tion, y'  know — tired  of  polo";  and  immediately  there- 
after use  the  aeroplane  to  raid  arsenals,  rescue  a  maiden 
from  robbers  or  a  large  ruby  from  its  lawful  but  heathenish 
possessors,  or  prevent  a  Zeppelin  from  raiding  the  coast. 
But  they  never  by  any  chance  fly  these  machines  before 
gum-chewing  thousands  for  hire.  In  England  they  abso- 
lutely must  motor  from  The  Club  to  the  flying-field  in  a 
"powerful  Rolls-Royce  car."  The  British  aviators  of  fic- 

168 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

tion  a»e  usually  from  Oxford  and  Eton.  They  are  splen- 
didly languid  and  modest  and  smartly  dressed  in  society, 
but  when  they  condescend  to  an  adventure  or  to  a 
coincidence,  they  are  very  devils,  six  feet  of  steel  and 
sinew,  boys  of  the  bulldog  breed  with  a  strong  trace  of 
humming-bird.  Like  their  English  kindred,  the  Americans 
take  up  aviation  only  for  gentlemanly  sport.  And  they 
do  go  about  rescuing  things.  Nothing  is  safe  from  their 
rescuing.  But  they  do  not  have  Rolls-Royce  cars. 

Carl  and  his  class  at  Bagby's  were  not  of  this  gilded 
race.  Carl's  flying  was  as  sordidly  real  as  laying  brick 
for  a  one-story  laundry  in  a  mill-town.  Therefore,  being 
real,  it  was  romantic  and  miraculous. 

Among  Carl's  class  was  Hank  Odell,  the  senior  student, 
tall,  thin,  hopelessly  plain  of  face;  a  drawling,  rough- 
haired,  eagle-nosed  Yankee,  who  grinned  shyly  and  whose 
Adam's  apple  worked  slowly  up  and  down  when  you 
spoke  to  him;  an  unimaginative  lover  of  dogs  and  ma- 
chinery; the  descendant  of  Lexington  and  Gettysburg  and 
a  flinty  Vermont  farm;  an  ex-fireman,  ex-sergeant  of  the 
army,  and  ex-teamster.  He  always  wore  a  khaki  shirt — 
the  wrinkles  of  which  caught  the  grease  in  black  lines, 
like  veins — with  black  trousers,  blunt-toed  shoes,  and  a 
pipe,  the  most  important  part  of  his  costume. 

There  was  the  round,  anxious,  polite  Mexican,  Tony 
Beanno,  called  "Tony  Bean" — wealthy,  simple,  fond  of 
the  violin  and  of  fast  motoring.  There  was  the  "school 
grouch,"  surly  Jack  Ryan,  the  chunky  ex-chauffeur. 
There  were  seven  nondescripts — a  clever  Jew  from  Seat- 
tle, two  college  youngsters,  an  apricot-rancher's  son,  a  cir- 
cus acrobat  who  wanted  a  new  line  of  tricks,  a  dull  ensign 
detailed  by  the  navy,  and  an  earnest  student  of  aerody- 
namics, aged  forty,  who  had  written  marvelously  dull 
books  on  air-currents  and  had  shrinkingly  made  himself 
a  fair  balloon  pilot.  The  navy  ensign  and  the  student 
were  the  snobs  who  lived  away  from  the  hangars,  in 
boarding-houses. 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

There  was  Lieutenant  Forrest  Haviland,  detailed  by 
the  army — Haviland  the  perfect  gentle  knight,  the  well- 
beloved,  the  nearest  approach  to  the  gracious  fiction 
aviator  of  them  all,  yet  never  drawling  in  affected  mod- 
esty, never  afraid  of  grease;  smiling  and  industrious  and 
reticent;  smooth  of  hair  and  cameo  of  face;  wearing 
khaki  riding-breeches  and  tan  puttees  instead  of  overalls; 
always  a  gentleman,  even  when  he  tried  to  appear  a 
workman.  He  pretended  to  be  enthusiastic  about  the 
lunch-wagon,  and  never  referred  to  his  three  generations 
of  army  officers.  But  most  of  the  others  were  shy  of  him, 
and  Jack  Ryan,  the  "school  grouch,"  was  always  trying 
to  get  him  into  a  fight. 

Finally,  there  was  Carl  Ericson,  who  slowly  emerged 
as  star  of  them  all.  He  knew  less  of  aerodynamics  than 
the  timid  specialist,  less  of  practical  mechanics  than  Hank 
Odell;  but  he  loved  the  fun  of  daring  more.  He  was  less 
ferocious  in  competition  than  was  Jack  Ryan,  but  he 
wasted  less  of  his  nerve.  He  was  less  agile  than  the  circus 
acrobat,  but  knew  more  of  motors.  He  was  less  com- 
pactly easy  than  Lieutenant  Haviland,  but  he  took  better 
to  overalls  and  sleeping  in  hangars  and  mucking  in  grease 
— he  whistled  ragtime  while  Forrest  Haviland  hummed 
MacDowell. 

Carl's  earliest  flights  were  in  the  school  machine, 
"P'tite  Marie,"  behind  Carmeau,  the  instructor.  Re- 
porters were  always  about,  talking  of  "impressions,"  and 
Carl  felt  that  he  ought  to  note  his  impressions  on  his  first 
ascent,  but  all  that  he  actually  did  notice  was  that  it  was 
hard  to  tell  at  what  instant  they  left  the  ground;  that 
when  they  were  up,  the  wind  threatened  to  crush  his  ribs 
and  burst  his  nostrils;  that  there  must  be  something 
perilously  wrong,  because  the  machine  climbed  so  swiftly; 
and,  when  they  were  down,  that  it  had  been  worth  wait- 
ing a  whole  lifetime  for  the  flight. 

For  days  he  merely  flew  with  the  instructor,  till  he  was 

170 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

himself  managing  the  controls.     At  last,  his  first  flight  by 
himself. 

He  had  been  ordered  to  try  a  flight  three  times  about 
the  aerodrome  at  a  height  of  sixty  feet,  and  to  land  care- 
fully, without  pancaking — "and  be  sure,  Monsieur,  be 
veree  sure  you  do  not  cut  off  too  high  from  the  ground," 
said  Carmeau. 

It  was  a  day  when  five  reporters  had  gathered,  and  Carl 
felt  very  much  in  the  limelight,  waiting  in  the  nacelle  of 
the  machine  for  the  time  to  start.  The  propeller  was 
revolved,  Carl  drew  a  long  breath  and  stuck  up  his  hand — 
and  the  engine  stopped.  He  was  relieved.  It  had  seemed 
a  terrific  responsibility  to  go  up  alone.  He  wouldn't, 
now,  not  for  a  minute  or  two.  He  knew  that  he  had  been 
afraid.  The  engine  was  turned  over  once  more — and 
once  more  stopped.  Carl  raged,  and  never  again,  in  ail 
his  flying,  did  real  fear  return  to  him.  "What  the  deuce 
is  the  matter?"  he  snarled.  Again  the  propeller  was  re- 
volved, and  this  time  the  engine  hummed  sweet.  The 
monoplane  ran  along  the  ground,  its  tail  lifting  in  the 
blast,  till  the  whole  machine  seemed  delicately  poised  on 
its  tiptoes.  He  was  off  the  ground,  his  rage  leaving  him 
as  his  fear  had  left  him. 

He  exulted  at  the  swiftness  with  which  a  distant  group 
of  trees  shot  at  him,  under  him.  He  turned,  and  the 
machine  mounted  a  little  on  the  turn,  which  was  against 
the  rules.  But  he  brought  her  to  even  keel  so  easily  that 
he  felt  all  the  mastery  of  the  man  who  has  finally  learned 
to  be  natural  on  a  bicycle.  He  tilted  up  the  elevator 
slightly  and  shot  across  a  series  of  fields,  climbing.  It 
was  perfectly  easy.  He  would  go  up — up.  It  was  all 
automatic  now — cloche  toward  him  for  climbing;  away 
from  him  for  descent;  toward  the  wing  that  tipped  up, 
in  order  to  bring  it  down  to  level.  The  machine  obeyed 
perfectly.  And  the  foot-bar,  for  steering  to  right  and 
left,  responded  to  such  light  motions  of  his  foot.  He 
grinned  exultantly.  He  wanted  to  shout. 
12  i?i 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

He  glanced  at  the  barometer  and  discovered  that  he 
was  up  to  two  hundred  feet.  Why  not  go  on? 

He  sailed  out  across  San  Mateo,  and  the  sense  of  people 
below,  running  and  waving  their  hands,  increased  his 
exultation.  He  curved  about  at  the  end,  somewhat 
afraid  of  his  ability  to  turn,  but  having  all  the  air  there 
was  to  make  the  turn  in,  and  headed  back  toward  the 
aerodrome.  Already  he  had  flown  five  miles. 

Half  a  mile  from  the  aerodrome  he  realized  that  his 
motor  was  slackening,  missing  fire;  that  he  did  not  know 
what  was  the  matter;  that  his  knowledge  had  left  him 
stranded  there,  two  hundred  feet  above  ground;  that  he 
had  to  come  down  at  once,  with  no  chance  to  choose  a 
landing-place  and  no  experience  in  gliding.  The  motor 
stopped  altogether. 

The  ground  was  coming  up  at  him  too  quickly. 

He  tilted  the  elevator,  and  rose.  But,  as  he  was 
volplaning,  this  cut  down  the  speed,  and  from  a  height 
of  ten  feet  above  a  field  the  machine  dropped  to  the 
ground  with  a  flat  plop.  Something  gave  way — but  Carl 
sat  safe,  with  the  machine  canted  to  one  side. 

He  climbed  out,  cold  about  the  spine,  and  discovered 
that  he  had  broken  one  wheel  of  the  landing-chassis. 

All  the  crowd  from  the  flying-field  were  running  tow- 
ard him,  yelling.  He  grinned  at  the  foolish  sight  they 
made  with  their  legs  and  arms  strewn  about  in  the  air 
as  they  galloped  over  the  rough  ground.  Lieutenant 
Haviland  came  up,  panting:  "All  right,  o'  man?  Good!" 
He  seized  Carl's  hand  and  wrung  it.  Carl  knew  that  he 
had  a  new  friend. 

Three  reporters  poured  questions  on  him.  How  far 
had  he  flown?  Was  this  really  his  first  ascent  by  him- 
self? What  were  his  sensations?  How  had  his  motor 
stopped?  Was  it  true  he  was  a  mining  engineer,  a 
wealthy  motorist? 

Hank  Odell,  the  shy,  eagle-nosed  Yankee,  running  up 
as  jerkily  as  a  cow  in  a  plowed  field,  silently  patted  Carl 

172 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

on  the  shoulder  and   began   to   examine   the    fractured 
landing-wheel.     At  last  the  instructor,  M.  Carmeau. 

Carl  had  awaited  M.  Carmeau's  praise  as  the  crown 
of  his  long  flight.  But  Carmeau  pulled  his  beard,  opened 
his  mouth  once  or  twice,  then  shrieked:  "What  the  davil 
you  t'ink  you  are?  A  millionaire  that  we  build  machines 
for  you  to  smash  them  ?  I  tole  you  to  fly  t'ree  time  around 
— you  fly  to  Algiers  an'  back — you  t'ink  you  are  another 
Farman  brother — you  are  a  damn  fool!  Suppose  your 
motor  he  stop  while  you  fly  over  San  Mateo  ?  Where  you 
land?  In  a  well?  In  a  chimney?  Hein?  You  know 
naut'ing  yet.  Next  time  you  do  what  I  talj  you.  Zut! 
That  was  a  flight,  a  flight,  you  make  a  flight,  that  was 
fine,  fine,  you  make  the  heart  to  swell.  But  nex'  time 
you  break  the  chassis  and  keel  yourself,  nom  <Tun  ton- 
nerre,  I  scol'  you!" 

Carl  was  humble.  But  the  Courier  reporter  spread 
'upon  the  front  page  the  story  of  "Marvelous  first  flight 
;  by  Bagby  student,"  and  predicted  that  a  new  Curtiss  was 
i  coming  out  of  California.  Under  a  half-tone  ran  the 
'caption,  "Ericson,  the  New  Hawk  of  the  Birdmen." 

The  camp  promptly  nicknamed  him  "Hawk."  They 
used  it  for  plaguing  him  at  first,  but  it  survived  as  an 
expression  of  fondness — Hawk  Ericson,  the  cheeriest  man 
in  the  school,  and  the  coolest  flier. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

NOT  all  their  days  were  spent  in  work.  There  were 
mornings  when  the  wind  would  not  permit  an  ascent 
and  when  there  was  nothing  to  do  in  the  workshop. 
They  sat  about  the  lunch-wagon  wrangling  endlessly,  or, 
like  Carl  and  Forrest  Haviland,  wandered  through  fields 
which  were  all  one  flame  with  poppies. 

Lieutenant  Haviland  had  given  up  trying  to  feel  com- 
fortable with  the  naval  ensign  student,  who  was  one  of  the 
solemn  worthies  who  clear  their  throats  before  speaking, 
and  then  speak  in  measured  terms  of  brands  of  cigars  and 
weather.  Gradually,  working  side  by  side  with  Carl, 
Haviland  seemed  to  find  him  a  friend  in  whom  to  con- 
fide. Once  or  twice  they  went  by  trolley  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, to  explore  Chinatown  or  drop  in  on  soldier  friends 
of  Haviland  at  the  Presidio. 

From  the  porch  of  a  studio  on  Telegraph  Hill,  in  San 
Francisco,  they  were  looking  down  on  the  islands  of  the 
bay,  waiting  for  the  return  of  an  artist  whom  Haviland 
knew.  Inarticulate  dreamers  both,  they  expressed  in 
monosyllables  the  glory  of  bluewater  before  them,  the 
tradition  of  R.  L.  S.  and  Frank  Norris,  the  future  of 
aviation.  They  gave  up  the  attempt  to  explain  the  magic 
of  San  Francisco — that  city-personality  which  transcends 
the  opal  hills  and  rare  amber  sunlight,  festivals,  and  the 
transplanted  Italian  hill-town  of  Telegraph  Hill,  liners 
sailing  out  for  Japan,  and  memories  of  the  Forty-niners. 
It  was  too  subtle  a  spirit,  too  much  of  it  lay  in  human  life 
with  the  passion  of  the  Riviera  linked  to  the  strength 

174 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

of  the  North,  for  them  to  be  able  to  comprehend  its  spell. 
.  .  .  But  regarding  their  own  ambitions  to  do,  they 
became  eloquent. 

"I  say,"  hesitated  Haviland,  "why  is  it  I  can't  get  in 
with  most  of  the  fellows  at  the  camp  the  way  you  can  ? 
I've  always  been  chummy  enough  with  the  fellows  at  the 
Point  and  at  posts." 

"Because  you've  been  brought  up  to  be  afraid  to  be 
anything  but  a  gentleman." 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  it's  that.  I  can  get  fond  as  the 
deuce  of  some  of  the  commonest  common  soldiers — and, 
Lord !  some  of  them  come  from  the  Bowery  and  all  sorts 
of  impossible  places." 

"Yes,  but  you  always  think  of  them  as  'common/ 
They  don't  think  of  each  other  that  way.  Suppose  I'd 
worked Well,  just  suppose  I'd  been  a  Bowery  bar- 
tender. Could  you  be  loafing  around  here  with  me? 
Could  you  go  off  on  a  bat  with  Jack  Ryan  ?" 

"Well,  maybe  not.  Maybe  working  with  Jack  Ryan 
is  a  good  thing  for  me.  I'm  getting  now  so  I  can  almost 
stand  his  stories!  I  envy  you,  knocking  around  with  all 
sorts  of  people.  Oh,  I  wish  I  could  call  Ryan  'Jack'  and 
feel  easy  about  it.  I  can't.  Perhaps  I've  got  a  little  of 
the  subaltern  snob  some  place  in  me." 

"You?    You're  a  prince." 

"If  you've  elevated  me  to  a  princedom,  the  least  I  can 
do  is  to  invite  you  down  home  for  a  week-end — down  to 
the  San  Spirito  Presidio.  My  father 's  commandant  there." 

"Oh,  I'd  like  to,  but I  haven't  got  a  dress-suit." 

"Buy  one." 

"Yes,  I  could  do  that,  but Oh,  rats!  Forrest,  I've 

been  knocking  around  so  long  I  feel  shy  about  my  table 
manners  and  everything.  I'd  probably  eat  pie  with  my 
fingers." 

"You  make  me  so  darn  tired,  Hawk.  You  talk  about 
my  having  to  learn  to  chum  with  people  in  overalls. 
You've  got  to  learn  not  to  let  people  in  evening  clothes 

175 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

put  anything  over  on  you.  That's  your  difficulty  from 
having  lived  in  the  back-country  these  last  two  or  three 
years.  You  have  an  instinct  for  manners.  But  I  did 
notice  that  as  soon  as  you  found  out  I  was  in  the  army 
you  spent  half  the  time  disliking  me  as  a  militarist,  and 
the  other  half  expecting  me  to  be  haughty — Lord  knows 
what  over.  It  took  you  two  weeks  to  think  of  me  as 
Forrest  Haviland.  I'm  ashamed  of  you!  If  you're  a 
socialist  you  ought  to  think  that  anything  you  like 
belongs  to  you." 

"That's  a  new  kind  of  socialism." 

"So  much  the  better.  Me  and  Karl  Marx,  the  economic 
inventors.  .  .  .  But  I  was  saying:  if  you  act  as  though 
things  belong  to  you  people  will  apologize  to  you  for 
having  borrowed  them  from  you.  And  you've  got  to  do 
that,  Hawk.  You're  going  to  be  one  of  the  best-known 
fliers  in  the  country,  and  you'll  have  to  meet  all  sorts 
of  big  guns — generals  and  Senators  and  female  climbers 
that  work  the  peace  societies  for  social  position,  and  so 
on,  and  you've  got  to  know  how  to  meet  them.  .  .  .  Any- 
way, I  want  you  to  come  to  San  Spirito." 

To  San  Spirito  they  went.  During  the  three  days  pre- 
ceding, Carl  was  agonized  at  the  thought  of  having  to  be 
polite  in  the  presence  of  ladies.  No  matter  how  brusquely 
he  told  himself,  "I'm  as  good  as  anybody,"  he  was  uneasy 
about  forks  and  slang  and  finger-nails,  and  looked  forward 
to  the  ordeal  with  as  much  pleasure  as  a  man  about  to  be 
hanged,  hanged  in  a  good  cause,  but  thoroughly. 

Yet  when  Colonel  Haviland  met  them  at  San  Spirito 
station,  and  Carl  heard  the  kindly  salutation  of  the  gra- 
cious, fat,  old  Indian-fighter,  he  knew  that  he  had  at  last 
come  home  to  his  own  people — an  impression  that  was 
the  stronger  because  the  house  of  Oscar  Ericson  had 
been  so  much  house  and  so  little  home.  The  colonel  was 
a  widower,  and  for  his  only  son  he  showed  a  proud  affection 
which  included  Carl.  The  three  of  them  sat  in  state, 
after  dinner,  on  the  porch  of  Quarters  No.  i,  smoking 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

cigars  and  looking  down  to  a  spur  of  the  Santa  Lucia 
Mountains,  where  it  plunged  into  the  foam  of  the  Pacific. 
They  talked  of  aviation  and  eugenics  and  the  Benet- 
Mercier  gun,  of  the  post  doctor's  sister  who  had  come 
from  the  East  on  a  visit,  and  of  a  riding-test,  but  their 
hearts  spoke  of  affection.  .  .  .  Usually  it  is  a  man  and 
a  woman  that  make  home;  but  three  men,  a  stranger  one 
of  them,  talking  of  motors  on  a  porch  in  the  enveloping 
dusk,  made  for  one  another  a  home  to  remember  always. 

They  stayed  over  Monday  night,  for  a  hop,  and  Carl 
found  that  the  officers  and  their  wives  were  as  approach- 
able as  Hank  Odell.  They  did  not  seem  to  be  waiting 
for  young  Ericson  to  make  social  errors.  When  he  con- 
fessed that  he  had  forgotten  what  little  dancing  he  knew, 
the  sister  of  the  post  doctor  took  him  in  hand,  retaught 
him  the  waltz,  and  asked  with  patent  admiration:  "How 
does  it  feel  to  fly  ?  Don't  you  get  frightened  ?  I'm  terribly 
in  awe  of  you  and  Mr.  Haviland.  I  know  I  should  be 
frightened  to  death,  because  it  always  makes  me  dizzy 
just  to  look  down  from  a  high  building." 

Carl  slipped  away,  to  be  happy  by  himself,  and  hid  in 
the  shadow  of  palms  on  the  porch,  lapped  in  the  flutter 
of  pepper-trees.  The  orchestra  began  a  waltz  that  set 
his  heart  singing.  He  heard  a  girl  cry:  "Oh,  goody!  the 
'Blue  Danube'!  We  must  go  in  and  dance  that." 

"The  Blue  Danube."  The  name  brought  back  the 
novels  of  General  Charles  King,  as  he  had  read  them  in 
high-school  days;  flashed  the  picture  of  a  lonely  post, 
yellow-lighted,  like  a  topaz  on  the  night-swathed  desert; 
a  rude  ball-room,  a  young  officer  dancing  to  the  "Blue 
Danube's"  intoxication;  a  hot-riding,  dusty  courier, 
hurling  in  with  news  of  an  Apache  outbreak;  a  few 
minutes  later  a  troop  of  cavalry  slanting  out  through  the 
gate  on  horseback,  with  a  farewell  burning  the  young 
officer's  lips.  ...  He  was  in  just  such  an  army  story,  now! 

The  scent  of  royal  climbing-roses  enveloped  Carl  as  that 
picture  changed  into  others.  San  Spirito  Presidio  became 

177 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

a  fcvast  military  encampment  over  which  Hawk  Ericson 
was  flying.  .  .  .  From  his  monoplane  he  saw  a  fairy  town, 
with  red  roofs  rising  to  a  tower  of  fantastic  turrets. 
'(That  was  doubtless  the  memory  of  a  magazine-cover 
^painted  by  Maxfield  Parrish.)  ...  He  was  wandering 
1  through  a  poppy-field  with  a  girl  dusky  of  eyes,  soft  black 
of  hair,  ready  for  any  jaunt.  .  .  .  Pictures  bright  and 
various  as  tropic  shells,  born  of  music  and  peace  and  his 
affection  for  the  Havilands;  pictures  which  promised  him 
the  world.  For  the  first  time  Hawk  Ericson  realized  that 
he  might  be  a  Personage  instead  of  a  back-yard  boy. 
.  .  .  The  girl  with  twilight  eyes  was  smiling. 

The  Bagby  camp  broke  up  on  the  first  of  May,  with  all 
of  them,  except  one  of  the  nondescript  collegians  and  the 
air-current  student,  more  or  less  trained  aviators.  Carl 
was  going  out  to  tour  small  cities,  for  the  George  Flying 
Corporation.  Lieutenant  Haviland  was  detailed  to  the 
army  flying-camp. 

Parting  with  Haviland  and  kindly  Hank  Odell,  with 
Carmeau  and  anxiously  polite  Tony  Bean,  was  as  wistful 
as  the  last  night  of  senior  year.  Till  the  old  moon  rose, 
sad  behind  tulip-trees,  they  sat  on  packing-boxes  by  the 
larger  hangar,  singing  in  close  harmony  "Sweet  Adeline," 
"Teasing,"  "I've  Been  Working  on  the  Railroad."  .  .  . 
"Hay-ride  classics,  with  barber-shop  chords,"  the  songs 
are  called,  but  tears  were  in  Carl's  eyes  as  the  minors 
sobbed  from  the  group  of  comrades  who  made  fun  of  one 
another  and  were  prosaic  and  pounded  their  heels  on  the 
packing-boxes — and  knew  that  they  were  parting  to  face 
death.  Carl  felt  Forrest  Haviland's  hand  on  one  shoulder, 
then  an  awkward  pat  from  tough  Jack  Ryan's  paw,  as 
Tony  Bean's  violin  turned  the  plaintive  half-light  into 
music,  and  broke  its  heart  in  the  "Moonlight  Sonata." 


CHAPTER  XX 

,  piston-ring  burnt  off  and  put  the  exhaust- valve 
on  the  blink.  That  means  one  cylinder  out  of 
business,"  growled  Hawk  Ericson.  "I  could  fly,  maybe, 
but  I  don't  like  to  risk  it  in  this  wind.  It  was  bad  enough 
this  morning  when  I  tried  it." 

"Oh,  this  hick  town  's  going  to  be  the  death  of  us,  all 
right — and  Riverport  to-morrow,  with  a  contract  nice  as 
pie,  if  we  can  only  get  there,"  groaned  his  manager,  Dick 
George,  a  fat  man  with  much  muscle  and  more  diamonds. 
"Listen  to  that  crowd.  Yelling  for  blood.  Sounds  like  a 
bunch  of  lumber-jacks  with  the  circus  slow  in  starting." 

The  head-line  feature  of  the  Onamwaska  County  spring 
fair  was  "Hawk  Ericson,  showing  the  most  marvelous 
aerial  feats  of  the  ages  with  the  scientific  marvels  of 
aviation,  in  his  famous  French  Bleriot  flying-machine,  the 
first  flying-machine  ever  seen  in  this  state,  no  balloon  or 
fake,  come  to  Onamwaska  by  the  St.  L.  &  N."  The 
spring  fair  was  usually  a  small  gathering  of  farmers  to 
witness  races  and  new  agricultural  implements,  but  this 
time  every  road  for  thirty-five  miles  was  dust-fogged  with 
buggies  and  democrat  wagons  and  small  motor-cars. 
Ten  thousand  people  were  packed  about  the  race-track. 

It  was  Carl's  third  aviation  event.  A  neat,  though  not 
imposing  figure,  in  a  snug  blue  flannel  suit,  with  his  cap 
turned  round  on  his  head,  he  went  to  the  flap  of  the 
rickety  tent  which  served  as  his  hangar.  A  fierce  cry 
of  "Fly!  Fly!  Why  don't  he  fly?"  was  coming  from  the 
long  black  lines  edging  the  track,  and  from  the  mound 
of  people  on  the  small  grand  stand;  the  pink  blur  of  their 

179 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

faces  turned  toward  him — him,  Carl  Ericson;  all  of  them 
demanding  him!  The  five  meek  police  of  Onamwaska  were 
trotting  back  and  forth,  keeping  them  behind  the  barriers. 
Carl  was  apprehensive  lest  this  ten-thousandfold  demand 
drag  him  out,  make  him  fly,  despite  a  wind  that  was 
blowing  the  flags  out  straight,  and  whisking  up  the  litter 
of  newspapers  and  cracker-jack  boxes  and  pink  programs. 
While  he  stared  out,  an  official  crossing  the  track  fairly 
leaned  up  against  the  wind,  which  seized  his  hat  and  sailed 
it  to  the  end  of  the  track. 

"Some  wind!"  Carl  grunted,  stolidly,  and  went  to  the 
back  of  the  silent  tent,  to  reread  the  local  papers'  ac- 
counts of  his  arrival  at  Onamwaska.  It  was  a  picturesque 
narrative  of  the  cheering  mob  following  him  down  the 
street  ("Gee!  that  was  me  they  followed!"),  crowding  into 
the  office  of  the  Astor  House  and  making  him  autograph 
hundreds  of  cards;  of  girls  throwing  roses  ("Humph! 
geraniums  is  more  like  it!")  from  the  windows. 

"A  young  man,"  wrote  an  enthusiastic  female  reporter, 
"handsome  as  a  Greek  god,  but  honestly  I  believe  he  is 
still  in  his  twenties;  and  he  is  as  slim  and  straight  as  a 
soldier,  flaxen-haired  and  rosy-cheeked — the  birdman,  the 
god  of  the  air." 

"Handsome   as   a   Greek "   Carl   commented.     "I 

look  like  a  Minnesota  Norwegian,  and  that  ain't  so  bad, 

but  handsome Urrrrrg!  .  .  .  Sure  they  love  me,  all 

right.  Hear  Jem  yell.  Oh,  they  love  me  like  a  dog  does 
a  bone.  .  .  .  Saint  Jemima!  talk  about  football  rooting.  .  .  . 
Come  on,  Greek  god,  buck  up." 

He  glanced  wearily  about  the  tent,  its  flooring  of  long, ' 
dry  grass  stained  with  ugly  dark-blue  lubricating-oil, 
under  the  tan  light  coming  through  the  canvas.  His 
manager  was  sitting  on  a  suit-case,  pretending  to  read  a 
newspaper,  but  pinching  his  lower  lip  and  consulting  his 
watch,  jogging  his  foot  ceaselessly.  Their  temporary 
mechanic,  who  had  given  up  trying  to  repair  the  lame 
valve,  squatted  with  bent  head,  biting  his  lip,  barkening 

1 80 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

to  the  blood-hungry  mob.  Carl's  own  nerves  grew  tauter 
and  tauter  as  he  saw  the  manager's  restless  foot  and  the 
mechanic's  tension.  He  strolled  to  the  monoplane,  his 
back  to  the  tent-opening. 

He  started  as  the  manager  exclaimed:  "Here  they 
come!  After  us!" 

Outside  the  tent  a  sound  of  running. 

The  secretary  of  the  fair,  a  German  hardware-dealer  with 
an  automobile-cap  like  a  yachting-cap,  panted  in,  gasping: 
"Come  quick!  They  won't  wait  any  longer!  I  been 
trying  to  calm  'em  down,  but  they  say  you  got  to  fly. 
They're  breaking  over  the  barriers  into  the  track.  The 
p'lice  can't  keep  'em  back." 

Behind  the  secretary  came  the  chairman  of  the  enter- 
tainment committee,  a  popular  dairyman,  who  was  pale 
as  he  demanded:  "You  got  to  play  ball,  Mr.  Ericson. 
I  won't  guarantee  what  '11  happen  if  you  don't  play  ball, 
Mr.  Ericson.  You  got  to  make  him  fly,  Mr.  George. 
The  crowd  's  breaking " 

Behind  him  charged  a  black  press  of  people.  They 
packed  before  the  tent,  trying  to  peer  in  through  the  half- 
closed  tent-opening,  like  a  crowd  about  a  house  where  a 
policeman  is  making  an  arrest.  Furiously: 

"Where's  the  coward?  Fake!  Bring  'im  out!  Why 
don't  he  fly?  He's  a  fake!  His  flying-machine 's  never 
been  off  the  ground!  He's  a  four-flusher!  Run  'im  out 
of  town!  Fake!  Fake!  Fake!" 

The  secretary  and  chairman  stuck  out  deprecatory 
heads  and  coaxed  the  mob.  Carl's  manager  was  an  old 
circus-man.  He  had  removed  his  collar,  tie,  and  flashy 
diamond  pin,  and  was  diligently  wrapping  the  thong  of  a 
black-jack  about  his  wrist.  Their  mechanic  was  crawling 
under  the  side  of  the  tent.  Carl  caught  him  by  the  seat 
of  his  overalls  and  jerked  him  back. 

As  Carl  turned  to  face  the  tent  door  again  the  manager 
ranged  up  beside  him,  trying  to  conceal  the  black-jack  in 
his  handy  and  casually  murmuring,  "Scared,  Hawk?" 

181 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Nope.     Too  mad  to  be  scared." 

The  tent-flap  was  pulled  back.  Tossing  hands  came 
through.  The  secretary  and  chairman  were  brushed  aside. 
The  mob-leader,  a  red-faced,  loud-voiced  town  sport,  very 
drunk,  shouted,  "Come  out  and  fly  or  we'll  tar  and  feather 
you!" 

"Yuh,  come  on,  you  fake,  you  four-flusher!"  echoed  the 
voices. 

The  secretary  and  chairman  were  edging  back  into  the 
tent,  beside  Carl's  cowering  mechanic. 

Something  broke  in  Carl's  hold  on  himself.  With  his 
arm  drawn  back,  his  fist  aimed  at  the  point  of  the  mob- 
leader's  jaw,  he  snarled:  "You  can't  make  me  fly.  You 
stick  that  ugly  mug  of  yours  any  farther  in  and  I'll  bust 

it.  I'll  fly  when  the  wind  goes  down You  would, 

would  you?" 

As  the  mob-leader  started  to  advance,  Carl  jabbed  at 
him.  It  was  not  a  very  good  jab.  But  the  leader  stopped. 
The  manager,  black-jack  in  hand,  caught  Carl's  arm,  and 
ordered:  "Don't  start  anything!  They  can  lick  us. 
Just  look  ready.  Don't  say  anything.  We'll  hold  'em 
till  the  cops  come.  But  nix  on  the  punch." 

"Right,  Cap'n,"  said  Carl. 

It  was  a  strain  to  stand  motionless,  facing  the  crowd, 
not  answering  their  taunts,  but  he  held  himself  in,  and  in 
two  minutes  the  yell  came:  "Cheese  it!  The  cops!" 
The  mob  unwillingly  swayed  back  as  Onamwaska's  heroic 
little  band  of  five  policemen  wriggled  through  it,  requesting 
their  neighbors  to  desist.  .  .  .  They  entered  the  tent  and, 
after  accepting  cigars  from  Carl's  manager,  coldly  tpld 
him  that  Carl  was  a  fake,  and  lucky  to  escape;  that  Carl 
would  better  "jump  right  out  and  fly  if  he  knew  what  was 
good  for  him."  Also,  they  nearly  arrested  the  manager 
for  possessing  a  black-jack,  and  warned  him  that  he'd 
better  not  assault  any  of  the  peaceable  citizens  of  beautiful 
Onamwaska.  .  .  . 

When  they  had  coaxed  the  mob  behind  the  barriers,  by 

182 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

announcing  that  Ericson  would  now  go  up,  Carl  swore: 
"I  won't  move!  They  can't  make  me!" 

The  secretary  of  the  fair,  who  had  regained  most  of  his 
courage,  spoke  up,  pertly,  "Then  you  better  return  the 
five  hundred  advance,  pretty  quick  sudden,  or  I'll  get  an 
attachment  on  your  fake  flying-machine!" 

"You  go Nix,  nix,  Hawk,  don't  hit  him;  he  ain't 

worth  it.  You  go  to  hell,  brother,"  said  the  manager, 
mechanically.  But  he  took  Carl  aside,  and  groaned: 
"Gosh!  we  got  to  do  something!  It's  worth  two  thousand 
dollars  to  us,  you  know.  Besides,  we  haven't  got  enough 
cash  in  our  jeans  to  get  out  of  town,  and  we'll  miss  the  big 
Riverport  purse.  .  .  .  Still,  suit  yourself,  old  man.  Maybe 
I  can  get  some  money  by  wiring  to  Chicago." 

"Oh,  let's  get  it  over!"  Carl  sighed.  "I'd  love  to  dis- 
appoint Onamwaska.  We'll  make  fifteen  thousand  dollars 
this  month  and  next,  anyway,  and  we  can  afford  to  spit 
'em  in  the  eye.  But  I  don't  want  to  leave  you  in  a  hole. 
.  .  .  Here  you,  mechanic,  open  up  that  tent-flap.  All  the 
way  across.  .  .  .  No,  not  like  that,  you  boob!  .  .  .  So.  .  .  . 
Come  on,  now,  help  me  push  out  the  machine.  Here 
you,  Mr.  Secretary,  hustle  me  a  couple  of  men  to  hold 
her  tail." 

The  crowd  rose,  the  fickle  crowd,  scenting  the  promised 
blood,  and  applauded  as  the  monoplane  was  wheeled  upon 
the  track  and  turned  to  face  the  wind.  The  mechanic 
and  two  assistants  had  to  hold  it  as  a  dust-filled  gust 
caught  it  beneath  the  wings.  As  Carl  climbed  into  the 
seat  and  the  mechanic  went  forward  to  start  the  engine, 
another  squall  hit  the  machine  and  she  almost  turned  over 
sidewise. 

As  the  machine  righted,  the  manager  ran  up  and 
begged:  "You  never  in  the  world  can  make  it  in 
this  wind,  Hawk.  Better  not  try  it.  I'll  wire  for 
some  money  to  get  out  of  town  with,  and  Onamwaska 
can  go  soak  its  head." 

"Nope.  I'm  gettin'  sore  now,  Dick.  .  .  .  Hey  you, 

183 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

mechanic:  hurt  that  wing  when  she  tipped?  ...  All  right. 
Start  her.  Quick.  While  it's  calm." 

The  engine  whirred.  The  assistants  let  go  the  tail. 
The  machine  labored  forward,  but  once  it  left  the  ground 
it  shot  up  quickly.  The  head-wind  came  in  a  terrific  gust. 
The  machine  hung  poised  in  air  for  a  moment,  driven  back 
by  the  gale  nearly  as  fast  as  it  was  urged  forward  by  its 
frantically  revolving  propeller. 

Carl  was  as  yet  too  doubtful  of  his  skill  to  try  to  climb 
above  the  worst  of  the  wind.  If  he  could  only  keep  a 
level  course 

He  fought  his  way  up  one  side  of  the  race-track.  He 
crouched  in  his  seat,  meeting  the  sandy  blast  with  bent 
head.  The  parted  lips  which  permitted  him  to  catch  his 
breath  were  stubborn  and  hard  about  his  teeth.  His 
hands  played  swiftly,  incessantly,  over  the  control  as 
he  brought  her  back  to  even  keel.  He  warped  the 
wings  so  quickly  that  he  balanced  like  an  acrobat 
sitting  rockingly  on  a  tight -wire.  He  was  too  busy 
to  be  afraid  or  to  remember  that  there  was  a  throng 
of  people  below  him.  But  he  was  conscious  that  the 
grand  stand,  at  the  side  of  the  track,  half-way  down, 
was  creeping  toward  him. 

More  every  instant  did  he  hate  the  clamor  of  the  gale 
and  the  stream  of  minute  drops  of  oil,  blown  back  from  the 
engine,  that  spattered  his  face.  His  ears  strained  for 
misfire  of  the  engine,  if  it  stopped  he  would  be  hurled  to 
earth.  And  one  cylinder  was  not  working.  He  forgot 
that;  kept  the  cloche  moving;  fought  the  wind  with  his 
will  as  with  his  body. 

Now,  he  was  aware  of  the  grand  stand  below  him. 
Now,  of  the  people  at  the  end  of  the  track.  He  flew 
beyond  the  track,  and  turned.  The  whole  force  of  the 
gale  was  thrown  behind  him,  and  he  shot  back  along  the 
other  side  of  the  race-track  at  eighty  or  ninety  miles  an 
hour.  Instantly  he  was  at  the  end;  then  a  quarter  of  a 
mile  beyond  the  track,  over  plowed  fields,  where  upward 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

currents  of  warm  air  increased  the  pitching  of  the  machine 
as  he  struggled  to  turn  her  again  and  face  the  wind. 

The  following  breeze  was  suddenly  retarded  and  he 
dropped  forty  feet,  tail  down. 

He  was  only  forty  feet  from  the  ground,  falling  straight, 
when  he  got  back  to  even  keel  and  shot  ahead.  How  safe 
the  nest  of  the  nacelle  where  he  sat  seemed  then!  Almost 
gaily  he  swung  her  in  a  great  wavering  circle — and  the 
wind  was  again  in  his  face,  hating  him,  pounding  him, 
trying  to  get  under  the  wings  and  turn  the  machine  turtle. 

Twice  more  he  worked  his  way  about  the  track.  The 
conscience  of  the  beginner  made  him  perform  a  diffident 
Dutch  roll  before  the  grand  stand,  but  he  was  growling, 
"And  that's  all  they're  going  to  get.  See?" 

As  he  soared  to  earth  he  looked  at  the  crowd  for  the 
first  time.  His  vision  was  so  blurred  with  oil  and  wind- 
soreness  that  he  saw  the  people  only  as  a  mass  and  he 
fancied  that  the  stretch  of  slouch-hats  and  derbies  was  a 
field  of  mushrooms  swaying  and  tilted  back.  He  was 
curiously  unconscious  of  the  presence  of  women;  he  felt 
all  the  spectators  as  men  who  had  bawled  for  his  death 
and  whom  he  wanted  to  hammer  as  he  had  hammered  the 
wind. 

He  was  almost  down.  He  cut  off  his  motor,  glided 
horizontally  three  feet  above  the  ground,  and  landed, 
while  the  cheers  cloaked  even  the  honking  of  the  parked 
automobiles. 

CarPs  manager,  fatly  galloping  up,  shrilled,  "How  was 
it,  old  man?" 

"Oh,  it  was  pretty  windy,"  said  Carl,  crawling  down  and 
rubbing  the  kinks  out  of  his  arms.  "But  I  think  the 
wind  's  going  down.  Tell  the  announcer  to  tell  our  dear 
neighbors  that  I'll  fly  again  at  five." 

"  But  weren't  you  scared  when  she  dropped  ?  You  went 
down  so  far  that  the  fence  plumb  hid  you.  Couldn't  see 
you  at  all.  Ugh!  Sure  thought  the  wind  had  you. 
Weren't  you  scared  then  ?  You  don't  look  it." 

185 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Then?  Oh!  Then.  Oh  yes,  sure,  I  guess  I  was 
scared,  all  right!  .  .  .  Say,  we  got  that  seat  padded  so 
she's  darn  comfortable  now." 

The  crowd  was  collecting.  Carl's  manager  chuckled  to 
the  president  of  the  fair  association,  "Well,  that  was  some 
flight,  eh?" 

"Oh,  he  went  down  the  opposite  side  of  the  track  pretty 
fast,  but  why  the  dickens  was  he  so  slow  going  up  my 
side  ?  My  eyes  ain't  so  good  now  that  it  does  me  any  good 
if  a  fellow  speeds  up  when  he's  a  thousand  miles  away. 
And  where's  all  these  tricks  in  the  air " 

"That,"  murmured  Carl  to  his  manager,  "is  the 
i-den-ti-cal  man  that  stole  the  blind  cripple's  crutch  to 
make  himself  a  toothpick." 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  great  Belmont  Park  Aero  Meet,  which  woke 
New  York  to  aviation,  in  October,  1910,  was  coming 
to  an  end.  That  clever  new  American  flier,  Hawk 
Ericson,  had  won  only  sixth  place  in  speed,  but  he  had 
won  first  prize  in  duration,  by  a  flight  of  nearly  six  hours, 
driving  round  and  round  and  round  the  pylons,  hour  on 
hour,  safe  and  steady  as  a  train,  never  taking  the  risk  of 
sensational  banking,  nor  spiraling  like  Johnstone,  but 
amusing  himself  and  breaking  the  tedium  by  keeping  an 
eye  out  on  each  circuit  for  a  fat  woman  in  a  bright  lavender 
top-coat,  who  stood  out  in  the  dark  line  of  people  that 
flowed  beneath.  When  he  had  descended — acclaimed  the 
winner — thousands  of  heads  turned  his  way  as  though  on 
one  lever;  the  pink  faces  flashing  in  such  October  sunshine 
as  had  filled  the  back  yard  of  Oscar  Ericson,  in  Joralemon, 
when  a  lonely  Carl  had  performed  duration  feats  for  a 
sparrow.  That  same  shy  Carl  wanted  to  escape  from  the 
newspaper-men  who  came  running  toward  him.  He  hated 
their  incessant  questions — always  the  same:  "Were  you 
cold?  Could  you  have  stayed  up  longer?" 

Yet  he  had  seen  all  New  York  go  mad  over  aviation — 
rather,  over  news  about  aviation.  The  newspapers  had 
spread  over  front  pages  his  name  and  the  names  of  the 
other  fliers.  Carl  chuckled  to  himself,  with  bashful  awe, 
"Gee!  can  you  beat  it? — that's  me!"  when  he  beheld  him- 
self referred  to  in  editorial  and  interview  and  picture- 
caption  as  a  superman,  a  god.  He  heard  crowds  rustle, 
"Look,  there's  Hawk  Ericson!"  as  he  walked  along  the 
barriers.  He  heard  cautious  predictions  from  fellow- 
13  187 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

fliers,  and  loud  declarations  from  outsiders,  that  he  was 
the  coming  cross-country  champion.  He  was  introduced 
to  the  mayor  of  New  York,  two  Cabinet  members,  an 
assortment  of  Senators,  authors,  bank  presidents,  generals, 
and  society  rail-birds.  He  regularly  escaped  from  them — 
and  their  questions — to  help  the  brick-necked  Hank 
Odell,  from  the  Bagby  School,  who  had  entered  for  the 
meet,  but  smashed  up  on  the  first  day,  and  ever  since  had 
been  whistling  and  working  over  his  machine  and  en- 
couraging Carl,  "Good  work,  bud;  you've  got  'em  all 
going." 

With  vast  secrecy  and  a  perception  that  this  was  twice 
as  stirring  as  steadily  buzzing  about  in  his  Bleriot,  he  went 
down  to  the  Bowery  and,  in  front  of  the  saloon  where  he 
had  worked  as  a  porter  four  years  before,  he  bought  a  copy 
of  the  Evening  World  because  he  knew  that  on  the  third 
page  of  it  was  a  large  picture  of  him  and  a  signed  interview 
by  a  special-writer.  He  peered  into  the  saloon  windows 
to  see  if  Petey  McGuff  was  there,  but  did  not  find  him.  He 
went  to  the  street  on  which  he  had  boarded  in  the  hope 
that  he  might  do  something  for  the  girl  who  had  been 
going  wrong.  The  tenement  had  been  torn  down,  with 
blocks  of  others,  to  make  way  for  a  bridge-terminal,  and 
he  saw  the  vision  of  the  city's  pitiless  progress.  This 
quest  of  old  acquaintances  made  him  think  of  Joralemon. 
He  informed  Gertie  Cowles  that  he  was  now  "in  the 
aviation  game,  and  everything  is  going  very  well."  He 
sent  his  mother  a  check  for  five  hundred  dollars,  with 
awkward  words  of  affection. 

A  greater  spiritual  adventure  was  talking  for  hours, 
over  a  small  table  in  the  basement  of  the  Brevoort,  to 
Lieutenant  Forrest  Haviland,  who  was  attending  the 
Belmont  Park  Meet  as  spectator.  Theirs  was  the  talk 
of  tried  friends;  droning  on  for  a  time  in  amused  comment, 
rising  to  sudden  table-pounding  enthusiasms  over  aviators 
or  explorers,  with  exclamations  of,  "Is  that  the  way  it 
struck  you,  too?  I'm  awfully  glad  to  hear  you  say  that, 

188 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

because  that's  just  the  way  I  felt  about  it."  They  leaned 
back  in  their  chairs  and  played  with  spoons  and  reflec- 
tively broke  up  matches  and  volubly  sketched  plans  of 
controls,  drawing  on  the  table-cloth. 

Carl  took  the  sophisticated  atmosphere  of  the  Brevoort 
quite  for  granted.  Why  shouldn't  he  be  there!  And 
after  the  interest  in  him  at  the  meet  it  did  not  hugely 
abash  him  to  hear  a  group  at  a  table  behind  him  ejaculate: 
"I  think  that's  Hawk  Ericson,  the  aviator!  Yes,  sir, 
that's — who — it — is !" 

Finally  the  gods  gave  to  Carl  a  new  mechanic,  a  prince 
of  mechanics,  Martin  Dockerill.  Martin  was  a  tall,  thin, 
hatchet  -  faced,  tousle  -  headed,  slow -spoken,  irreverent 
Irish-Yankee  from  Fall  River;  the  perfect  type  of  Amer- 
ican aviators;  for  while  England  sends  out  its  stately 
soldiers  of  the  air,  and  France  its  short,  excitable  geniuses, 
practically  all  American  aviators  and  aviation  mechanics 
are  either  long-faced  and  lanky,  like  Martin  Dockerill 
and  Hank  Odell,  or  slim,  good-looking  youngsters  of  the 
college  track-team  type,  like  Carl  and  Forrest  Haviland. 

Martin  Dockerill  ate  pun'kin  pie  with  his  fingers,  played 
"Marching  through  Georgia"  on  the  mouth-organ,  ad- 
mired burlesque-show  women  in  sausage-shaped  pink 
tights,  and  wore  balbriggan  socks  that  always  reposed  in 
wrinkles  over  the  tops  of  his  black  shoes  with  frayed 
laces.  But  he  probably  could  build  a  very  decent  motor 
in  the  dark,  out  of  four  tin  cans  and  a  crowbar.  In 
A.D.  1910  he  still  believed  in  hell  and  plush  albums. 
But  he  dreamed  of  wireless  power-transmission.  He  was 
a  Free  and  Independent  American  Citizen  who  called  the 
Count  de  Lesseps,  "Hey,  Lessup."  But  he  would  have 
gone  with  Carl  aeroplaning  to  the  South  Pole  upon  five 
minutes'  notice — four  minutes  to  devote  to  the  motor,  and 
one  minute  to  write,  with  purple  indelible  pencil,  a  post- 
card to  his  aunt  in  Fall  River.  He  was  precise  about 
only  two  things — motor-timing  and  calling  himself  a 
"mechanician/'  not  a  "mechanic."  He  became  very 

189 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

friendly  with  Hank  Odell;  helped  him  repair  his  broken 
machine,  went  with  him  to  vaudeville,  or  stood  with  him 
before  the  hangar,  watching  the  automobile  parties  of 
pretty  girls  with  lordly  chaperons  that  came  to  call  on 
Grahame- White  and  Drexel.  "Some  heart-winners,  them 
guys,  but  I  back  my  boss  against  them  and  ev'body  else, 
Hank,"  Martin  would  say. 

The  meet  was  over;  the  aviators  were  leaving.  Carl 
had  said  farewell  to  his  new  and  well-loved  friends,  the 
pioneers  of  aviation — Latham,  Moisant,  Leblanc,  McCur- 
dy,  Ely,  de  Lesseps,  Mars,  Willard,  Drexel,  Grahame- 
White,  Hoxsey,  and  the  rest.  He  was  in  the  afterglow 
of  the  meet,  for  with  Titherington,  the  Englishman,  and 
Tad  Warren,  the  Wright  flier,  he  was  going  to  race  from 
Belmont  Park  to  New  Haven  for  a  ten-thousand-dollar 
prize  jointly  offered  by  a  New  Haven  millionaire  and  a 
New  York  newspaper.  At  New  Haven  the  three  com- 
petitors were  to  join  with  Tony  Bean  (of  the  Bagby 
School)  and  Walter  MacMonnies  (flying  a  Curtiss)  in  an 
exhibition  meet. 

Enveloped  in  baggy  overalls  over  the  blue  flannel  suit 
which  he  still  wore  when  flying,  Carl  was  directing  Martin 
Dockerill  in  changing  his  spark-plugs,  which  were  fouled. 
About  him,  the  aviators  were  having  their  machines 
packed,  laughing,  playing  tricks  on  one  another — boys 
who  were  virile  men;  mechanics  in  denim  who  stammered 

to  the  reporters,  "Oh,  well,  I  don't  know "  yet  who 

were  for  the  time  more  celebrated  than  Roosevelt  or 
Harry  Thaw  or  Bernard  Shaw  or  Champion  Jack  Johnson. 

Before  9.45  A.M.,  when  the  race  to  New  Haven  was 
scheduled  to  start,  the  newspaper-men  gathered;  but 
there  were  not  many  outsiders.  Carl  felt  the  lack  of  the 
stimulus  of  thronging  devotees.  He  worked  silently  and 
sullenly.  It  was  "the  morning  after."  He  missed 
Forrest  Haviland. 

He  began  to  be  anxious.    Could  he  get  off  on  time? 

190 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Exactly  at  9.45  Titherington  made  a  magnificent  start 
in  his  Henry  Farman  biplane.  Carl  stared  till  the  machine 
was  a  dot  in  the  clouds,  then  worked  feverishly.  Tad 
Warren,  the  second  contestant,  was  testing  out  his  motor, 
ready  to  go.  At  that  moment  Martin  Dockerill  suggested 
that  the  carburetor  was  dirty. 

"I'll  fly  with  her  the  way  she  is,"  Carl  snapped,  shiver- 
ing with  the  race-fever. 

A  cub  reporter  from  the  City  News  Association  piped, 
like  a  fox-terrier,  "What  time  '11  you  get  off,  Hawk?" 

"Ten  sharp." 

"No,  I  mean  what  time- will  you  really  get  off!" 

Carl  did  not  answer.  He  understood  that  the  reporters 
were  doubtful  about  him,  the  youngster  from  the  West 
who  had  been  flying  for  only  six  months.  At  last  came, 
the  inevitable  pest,  the  familiarly  suggestive  outsider. 
A  well-dressed,  well-meaning  old  bore  he  was;  a  complete 
stranger.  He  put  his  podgy  hand  on  Carl's  arm  and 
puffed:  "Well,  Hawk,  my  boy,  give  us  a  good  flight  to-day; 
not  but  what  you're  going  to  have  trouble.  There's 
something  I  want  to  suggest  to  you.  If  you'd  use  a 


gyroscope 

"Oh,  beat  it!"  snarled  Carl.  He  was  ashamed  of  him- 
self— but  more  angry  than  ashamed.  He  demanded  of 
Martin,  aside:  "All  right,  heh?  Can  I  fly  with  the  car- 
buretor as  she  is?  Heh?" 

"All  right,  boss.     Calm  down,  boss,  calm  down." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Look  here,  Hawk,  I  don't  want  to  butt  in.  You  can 
have  old  Martin  for  a  chopping-block  any  time  you  want 
to  cut  wood.  But  if  you  don't  calm  down  you'll  get  so 
screwed  up  mit  nerves  that  you  won't  have  any  control. 
Aw,  come  on,  boss,  speak  pretty!  Just  keep  your  shirt 
on  and  I'll  hustle  like  a  steam-engine." 

"Well,  maybe  you're  right.  But  these  assistant 
aviators  in  the  crowd  get  me  wild.  ...  All  right?  Hoorray. 
Here  goes.  .  .  .  Say,  don't  stop  for  anything  after  I  get  off. 

191 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Leave  the  boys  to  pack  up,  and  you  hustle  over  to  Sea 
Cliff  for  the  speed-boat.  You  ought  to  be  in  New  Haven 
almost  as  soon  as  I  am." 

Calmer  now,  he  peeled  off  his  overalls,  drew  a  wool- 
lined  leather  jacket  over  his  coat,  climbed  into  the  cock- 
pit, and  inspected  the  indicators.  As  he  was  testing  the 
spark  Tad  Warren  got  away. 

Third  and  last  was  Carl.     The  race-fever  shook  him. 

He  would  try  to  save  time.  Like  the  others,  he  had 
planned  to  fly  from  Belmont  Park  across  Long  Island 
to  Great  Neck,  and  cross  Long  Island  Sound  where  it  was 
very  narrow.  He  studied  his  map.  By  flying  across  to 
the  vicinity  of  Hempstead  Harbor  and  making  a  long 
diagonal  flight  over  water,  straight  over  to  Stamford, 
he  would  increase  the  factor  of  danger,  but  save  many 
miles;  and  the  specifications  of  the  race  permitted  him  to 
choose  any  course  to  New  Haven.  Thinking  only  of  the 
new  route,  taking  time  only  to  nod  good-by  to  Martin 
Dockerill  and  Hank  Odell,  he  was  off",  into  the  air. 

As  the  ground  dropped  beneath  him  and  the  green 
clean  spaces  and  innumerous  towns  of  Long  Island  spread 
themselves  out  he  listened  to  the  motor.  Its  music  was 
clear  and  strong.  Here,  at  least,  the  wind  was  light. 

He  would  risk  the  long  over-water  flight — very  long 
they  thought  it  in  1910. 

In  a  few  minutes  he  sighted  the  hills  about  Roslyn  and 
began  to  climb,  up  to  three  thousand  feet.  It  was  very 
cold.  His  hands  were  almost  numb  on  the  control.  He 
Descended  to  a  thousand  feet,  but  the  machine  jerked 
like  a  canoe  shooting  rapids,  in  the  gust  that  swept  up 
from  among  the  hills.  The  landscape  rose  swiftly  at  him 
over  the  erids  of  the  wings,  now  on  one  side,  now  on  the 
other,  as  the  machine  rolled. 

His  arms  were  tired  with  the  quick,  incessant  wing- 
warping.  He  rose  again.  Then  he  looked  at  the  Sound, 
and  came  down  to  three  hundred  feet,  lest  he  lose  his  way. 
For  the  Sound  was  white  with  fog.  .  .  .  No  wind  out 

192 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

there!  .  .  .  Water  and  cloud  blurred  together,  and  the  sky- 
line was  lost  in  a  mass  of  somber  mist,  which  ranged  from 
filmy  white  to  the  cold  dead  gray  of  old  cigar-ashes.  He 
wanted  to  hold  back,  not  dash  out  into  that  danger- 
filled  twilight.  But  already  he  was  roaring  over  gray- 
green  marshes,  then  was  above  fishing-boats  that  were 
slowly  rocking  in  water  dully  opaque  as  a  dim  old  mirror. 
He  noted  two  men  on  a  sloop,  staring  up  at  him  with 
foolish,  gaping,  mist-wet  faces.  Instantly  they  were  left 
behind  him.  He  rose,  to  get  above  the  fog.  Even  the 
milky,  sulky  water  was  lost  to  sight. 

He  was  horribly  lonely,  abominably  lonely. 

At  five  hundred  feet  altitude  he  was  not  yet  entirely 
above  the  fog.  Land  was  blotted  out.  Above  him, 
gray  sky  and  thin  writhing  filaments  of  vapor.  Beneath 
him,  only  the  fog-bank,  erupting  here  and  there  like  the 
unfolding  of  great  white  flowers  as  warm  currents  of  air 
burst  up  through  the  mist-blanket. 

Completely  solitary.  All  his  friends  were  somewhere 
far  distant,  in  a  place  of  solid  earth  and  sun-warmed 
hangars.  The  whole  knowable  earth  had  ceased  to  exist. 
There  was  only  slatey  void,  through  which  he  was  going 
on  for  ever.  Or  perhaps  he  was  not  moving.  Always 
the  same  coil  of  mist  about  him.  He  was  horribly  lonely. 

He  feared  that  the  fog  was  growing  thicker.  He 
studied  his  compass  with  straining  eyes.  He  was  startled 
by  a  gull's  plunging  up  through  the  mist  ahead  of  him, 
and  disappearing.  He  was  the  more  lonely  when  it  was 
gone.  His  eyebrows  and  cheeks  were  wet  with  the  steam. 
Drops  of  moisture  shone  desolately  on  the  planes.  It  was 
an  unhealthy  shine.  He  was  horribly  lonely. 

He  pictured  what  would  happen  if  the  motor  should 
stop  and  he  should  plunge  down  through  that  flimsy  vapor. 
His  pontoonless  frail  monoplane  would  sink  almost  at 
once.  ...  It  would  be  cold,  swimming.  How  long  could 
he  keep  up?  What  chance  of  being  found?  He  didn't 
want  to  fall.  The  cockpit  seemed  so  safe,  with  its  familiar 

193 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

watch  and  map-stand  and  supporting-wires.  It  was 
home.  The  wings  stretching  out  on  either  side  of  him 
seemed  comfortingly  solid,  adequate  to  hold  him  up. 
But  the  body  of  the  machine  behind  him  was  only  a 
framework,  not  even  inclosed.  And  cut  in  the  bottom 
of  the  cockpit  was  a  small  hole  for  observing  the  earth. 
He  could  see  fog  through  it,  in  unpleasant  contrast  to  the 
dull  yellow  of  the  cloth  sides  and  bottom.  Not  before 
had  it  daunted  him  to  look  down  through  that  hole. 
Now,  however,  he  kept  his  eyes  away  from  it,  and,  while 
he  watched  the  compass  and  oil-gauge,  and  kept  a  straight 
course,  he  was  thinking  of  how  nasty  it  would  be  to  drop, 
drop  down  there,  and  have  to  swim.  It  would  be  horribly 
lonely,  swimming  about  a  wrecked  monoplane,  hearing 
steamers'  fog-horns,  hopeless  and  afar. 

As  he  thought  that,  he  actually  did  hear  a  steamer 
hoarsely  whistling,  and  swept  above  it,  irresistibly.  He 
started;  his  shoulders  drooped. 

More  than  once  he  wished  that  he  could  have  seen 
Forrest  Haviland  again  before  he  started.  He  wished 
with  all  the  poignancy  of  man's  affection  for  a  real  man 
that  he  had  told  Forrest,  when  they  were  dining  at  the 
Brevoort,  how  happy  he  was  to  be  with  him.  He  was 
horribly  lonely. 

He  cursed  himself  for  letting  his  thoughts  become  thin 
and  damp  as  the  vapor  about  him.  He  shrugged  his 
shoulders.  He  listened  thankfully  to  the  steady  purr 
of  the  engine  and  the  whir  of  the  propeller.  He  would 
get  across!  He  ascended,  hoping  for  a  glimpse  of  the 
shore.  The  fog-smothered  horizon  stretched  farther  and 
farther  away.  He  was  unspeakably  lonely. 

Through  a  tear  in  the  mist  he  saw  sunshine  reflected 
from  houses  on  a  hill,  directly  before  him,  perhaps  one 
mile  distant.  He  shouted.  He  was  nearly  across.  Safe. 
And  the  sun  was  coming  out. 

Two  minutes  later  he  was  turning  north,  between  the 
water  and  a  town  which  his  map  indicated  as  Stamford. 

194 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

The  houses  beneath  him  seemed  companionable;  friendly 
were  the  hand-waving  crowds,  and  factory-whistles  gave 
him  raucous  greeting. 

Instantly,  now  that  he  knew  where  he  was,  the  race- 
fever  caught  him  again.  Despite  the  strain  of  crossing 
the  Sound,  he  would  not  for  anything  have  come  down  to 
rest.  He  began  to  wonder  how  afar  ahead  of  him  were 
Titherington  and  Tad  Warren. 

He  spied  a  train  running  north  out  of  Stamford,  swung 
over  above  it,  and  raced  with  it.  The  passengers  leaned 
out  of  the  windows,  trainmen  hung  perilously  from  the 
opened  doors  of  vestibuled  platforms,  the  engineer  tooted 
his  frantic  greetings  to  a  fellow-mechanic  who,  above  him 
in  the  glorious  bird,  sent  telepathic  greetings  which  the 
engineer  probably  never  got.  The  engineer  speeded  up; 
the  engine  puffed  out  vast  feathery  plumes  of  dull  black 
smoke.  But  he  drew  away  from  the  train  as  he  neared 
South  Norwalk. 

He  was  ascending  again  when  he  noted  something  that 
seemed  to  be  a  biplane  standing  in  a  field  a  mile  away. 
He  came  down  and  circled  the  field.  It  was  Titherington's 
Farman  biplane.  He  hoped  that  the  kindly  Englishman 
had  not  been  injured.  He  made  out  Titherington, 
talking  to  a  group  about  the  machine.  Relieved,  he  rose 
again,  amused  by  the  ant-hill  appearance  as  hundreds  of 
people,  like  black  bugs,  ran  toward  the  stalled  biplane, 
from  neighboring  farms  and  from  a  trolley-car  standing  in 
the  road. 

'  He  should  not  have  been  amused  just  then.  He  was 
too  low.  Directly  before  him  was  a  hillside  crowned 
with  trees.  He  shot  above  the  trees,  cold  in  the  stomach, 
muttering,  "Gee!  that  was  careless!" 

He  sped  forward.  The  race-fever  again.  Could  he 
pass  Tad  Warren  as  he  had  passed  Titherington?  He 
whirled  over  the  towns,  shivering  but  happy  in  the 
mellow,  cool  October  air,  far  enough  from  the  water  to  be 
out  of  what  fog  the  brightening  sun  had  left.  The  fields 

'95 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

rolled  beneath  him,  so  far  down  that  they  were  turned 
into  continuous  and  wonderful  masses  of  brown  and  gold. 
He  sang  to  himself.  He  liked  Titherington;  he  was  glad 
that  the  Englishman  had  not  been  injured;  but  it  was 
good  to  be  second  in  the  race;  to  have  a  chance  to  win  a 
contest  which  the  whole  country  was  watching;  to  be 
dashing  into  a  rosy  dawn  of  fame.  But  while  he  sang  he 
was  keeping  a  tense  lookout  for  Tad  Warren.  He  had  to 
pass  him! 

With  the  caution  of  the  Scotchlike  Norwegian,  he  had 
the  cloche  constantly  on  the  jiggle,  with  ceaseless  adjust- 
ments to  the  wind,  which  varied  constantly  as  he  passed 
over  different  sorts  of  terrain.  Once  the  breeze  dropped 
him  sidewise.  He  shot  down  to  gain  momentum,  brought 
her  to  even  keel,  and,  as  he  set  her  nose  up  again,  laughed 
boisterously. 

Never  again  would  he  be  so  splendidly  young,  never 
again  so  splendidly  sure  of  himself  and  of  his  medium  of 
expression.  He  was  to  gain  wisdom,  but  never  to  have 
more  joy  of  the  race. 

He  was  sure  now  that  he  was  destined  to  pass  Tad 
Warren. 

The  sun  was  ever  brighter;  the  horizon  ever  wider, 
rimming  the  saucer-shaped  earth.  When  he  flew  near 
the  Sound  he  saw  that  the  fog  had  almost  passed.  The 
water  was  gentle  and  colored  like  pearl,  lapping  the  sands, 
smoking  toward  the  radiant  sky.  He  passed  over  summer 
cottages,  vacant  and  asleep,  with  fantastic  holiday  roofs 
of  red  and  green.  Gulls  soared  like  flying  sickles  of 
silver  over  the  opal  sea.  Even  for  the  racer  there  was 
peace. 

He  made  out  a  mass  of  rock  covered  with  autumn-hued 
trees  to  the  left,  then  a  like  rock  to  the  right.  "West 
and  East  Rock — New  Haven!"  he  cried. 

The  city  mapped  itself  before  him  like  square  building- 
blocks  on  a  dark  carpet,  with  railroad  and  trolley  tracks 
like  flashing  spider-webs  under  the  October  noon. 

196 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

So  he  had  arrived,  then — and  he  had  not  caught  Tad 
Warren.  He  was  furious. 

He  circled  the  city,  looking  for  the  Green,  where  (in 
this  day  before  the  Aero  Club  of  America  battled  against 
over-city  flying)  he  was  to  land.  He  saw  the  Yale  campus, 
lazy  beneath  its  elms,  its  towers  and  turrets  dreaming  of 
Oxford.  His  anger  left  him. 

He  plunged  down  toward  the  Green — and  his  heart 
nearly  stopped.  The  spectators  were  scattered  every- 
where. How  could  he  land  without  crushing  some  one? 
With  trees  to  each  side  and  a  church  in  front,  he  was  too 
far  down  to  rise  again.  His  back  pressed  against  the  back 
of  the  little  seat,  [and  seemed  automatically  to  be  trying 
to  restrain  him  from  this  tragic  landing. 

The  people  were  fleeing.  In  front  there  was  a  tiny 
space.  But  there  was  no  room  to  sail  horizontally  and 
come  down  lightly.  He  shut  off  his  motor  and  turned  the 
monoplane's  nose  directly  at  the  earth.  She  struck  hard, 
bounced  a  second.  Her  tail  rose,  and  she  started,  with 
dreadful  deliberateness,  to  turn  turtle.  With  a  vault 
Carl  was  out  of  the  cockpit  and  clear  of  the  machine  as 
she  turned  over. 

Oblivious  of  the  clamorous  crowd  which  was  pressing  in 
about  him,  cutting  off  the  light,  replacing  the  clean  smell 
of  gasoline  and  the  upper  air  by  the  hot  odor  of  many 
bodies,  he  examined  the  monoplane  and  found  that  she 
had  merely  fractured  the  propeller  and  smashed  the  rudder. 

Some  one  was  fighting  through  the  crowd  to  his  side — 
Tony  Bean — Tony  the  round,  polite  Mexican  from  the 
Bagby  School.  He  was  crying:  "Hombre,  what  a  land- 
ing! You  have  saved  lives.  .  .  .  Get  out  of  the  way,  all  you 
people!" 

Carl  grinned  and  said:  "Good  to  see  you,  Tony. 
What  time  did  Tad  Warren  get  here?  Where's " 

"He  ees  not  here  yet." 

"What?     Huh?     How's  that?     Do  I  win?    That 

Say,  gosh!  I  hope  he  hasn't  been  hurt." 

197 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"Yes,  you  win." 

A  newspaper-man  standing  beside  Tony  said:  "Warren 
had  to  come  down  at  Great  Neck.  He  sprained  his 
shoulder,  but  that's  all." 

"That's  good." 

"But  you,"  insisted  Tony,  "aren't  you  badly  jarred, 
Hawk?" 

"Not  a  bit." 

The  gaping  crowd,  hanging  its  large  collective  ear 
toward  the  two  aviators,  was  shouting:  "Hoorray!  He's 
all  right!"  As  their  voices  rose  Carl  became  aware  that 
all  over  the  city  hundreds  of  factory-whistles  and  bells 
were  howling  their  welcome  to  him — the  victor. 

The  police  were  clearing  a  way  for  him.  As  a  police 
captain  touched  a  gold-flashing  cap  to  him,  Carl  remem- 
bered how  afraid  of  the  police  that  hobo  Slim  Ericson  had 
been. 

Tony  and  he  completed  examination  of  the  machine, 
with  Tony's  mechanician,  and  sent  it  off  to  a  shop,  to 
await  Martin  Dockerill's  arrival  by  speed-boat  and  racing- 
automobile.  Carl  went  to  receive  congratulations — and  a 
check — from  the  prize-giver,  and  a  reception  by  Yale 
officials  on  the  campus.  Before  him,  along  his  lane  of 
passage,  was  a  kaleidoscope  of  hands  sticking  out  from  the 
wall  of  people — hands  that  reached  out  and  shook  his  own 
till  they  were  sore,  hands  that  held  out  pencil  and  paper 
to  beg  for  an  autograph,  hands  of  girls  with  golden  flowers 
of  autumn,  hands  of  dirty,  eager,  small  boys — weaving, 
interminable  hands.  Dizzy  with  a  world  peopled  only 
by  writhing  hands,  yet  moved  by  their  greeting,  he 
made  his  way  across  the  Green,  through  Phelps  Gate- 
way, and  upon  the  campus.  Twisting  his  cap  and 
wishing  that  he  had  taken  off  his  leather  flying-coat, 
he  stood  upon  a  platform  and  heard  officials  congratu- 
lating him. 

The  reception  was  over.  But  the  people  did  not  move. 
And  he  was  very  tired.  He  whispered  to  a  professor: 

198 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"Is  that  a  dormitory,  there  behind  us?  Can  I  get  into 
it  and  get  away?" 

The  professor  beckoned  to  one  of  the  collegians,  and 
replied,  "I  think,  Mr.  Ericson,  if  you  will  step  down  they 
will  pass  you  into  Vanderbilt  Courtyard — by  the  gate  back 
of  us — and  you  will  be  able  to  escape." 

Carl  trusted  himself  to  the  bunch  of  boys  forming 
behind  him,  and  found  himself  rushed  into  the  compara- 
tive quiet  of  a  Tudor  courtyard.  A  charming  youngster, 
hatless  and  sleek  of  hair,  cried,  "Right  this  way,  Mr. 
Ericson — up  this  staircase  in  the  tower — and  we'll  give 
'em  the  slip." 

From  the  roar  of  voices  to  the  dusky  quietude  of  the 
hallway  was  a  joyous  escape.  Suddenly  Carl  was  a 
youngster,  permitted  to  see  Yale,  a  university  so  great 
that,  from  Plato  College,  it  had  seemed  an  imperial  myth. 
He  stared  at  the  list  of  room-occupants  framed  and  hung 
on  the  first  floor.  He  peeped  reverently  through  an  open 
door  at  a  suite  of  rooms. 

He  was  taken  to  a  room  with  a  large  collection  of  pil- 
lows, fire-irons,  Morris  chairs,  sets  of  books  in  crushed 
levant,  tobacco-jars  and  pipes — a  restless  and  boyish 
room,  but  a  real  haven.  He  stared  out  upon  the  campus, 
and  saw  the  crowd  stolidly  waiting  for  him.  He  glanced 
round  at  his  host  and  waved  his  hand  deprecatingly,  then 
tried  to  seem  really  grown  up,  really  like  the  famous  Hawk 
Ericson.  But  he  wished  that  Forrest  Haviland  were  there 
so  that  he  might  marvel :  "Look  at 'em,  will  you!  Wait- 
ing for  me!  Can  you  beat  it?  Some  start  for  my  Yale 
course!" 

In  a  big  chair,  with  a  pipe  supplied  by  the  youngster, 
he  shyly  tried  to  talk  to  a  senior  in  the  great  world  of  Yale 
(he  himself  had  not  been  able  to  climb  to  seniorhood 
even  in  Plato),  while  the  awed  youngster  shyly  tried  to 
talk  to  the  great  aviator. 

He  had  picked  up  a  Yale  catalogue  and  he  vaguely 
ruffled  its  pages,  thinking  of  the  difference  between  its 

199 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

range  of  courses  and  the  petty  inflexible  curriculum  of 
Plato.  Out  of  the  pages  leaped  the  name  "Frazer." 
He  hastily  turned  back.  There  it  was:  "Henry  Frazer, 
A.M.,  Ph.D.,  Assistant  Professor  in  English  Literature." 

Carl  rejoiced  boyishly  that,  after  his  defeat  at  Plato, 
Professor  Frazer  had  won  to  victory.  He  forgot  his  own 
triumph.  For  a  second  he  longed  to  call  on  Frazer  and 
pay  his  respects.  "No,"  he  growled  to  himself,  "I've  been 
so  busy  hiking  that  I've  forgotten  what  little  book-learnin* 

I  ever  had.     I'd  like  to  see  him,  but By  gum!  I'm 

going  to  begin  studying  again." 

Hidden  away  in  the  youngster's  bedroom  for  a  nap,  he 
dreamed  uncomfortably  of  Frazer  and  books.  That  did 
not  keep  him  from  making  a  good  altitude  flight  at  the 
New  Haven  Meet  that  afternoon,  with  his  hastily  repaired 
machine  and  a  new  propeller.  But  he  thought  of  new 
roads  for  wandering  in  the  land  of  books,  as  he  sat,  tired 
and  sleepy,  but  trying  to  appear  bright  and  appreciative, 
at  the  big  dinner  in  his  honor — the  first  sacrificial  banquet 
to  which  he  had  been  subjected — with  earnest  gentlemen 
in  evening  clothes,  glad  for  an  excuse  to  drink  just  a 
little  too  much  champagne;  with  mayors  and  councilmen 
and  bankers;  with  the  inevitable  stories  about  the  man 
who  was  accused  of  stealing  umbrellas  and  about  the 
two  skunks  on  a  fence  enviously  watching  a  motor-car. 

Equally  inevitable  were  the  speeches  praising  Carl's 
flight  as  a  "remarkable  achievement,  destined  to  live 
forever  in  the  annals  of  sport  and  heroism,  and  to  bring 
one  more  glory  to  the  name  of  our  fair  city." 

Carl  tried  to  appear  honored,  but  he  was  thinking: 
"Rats!  I'll  live  in  the  annals  of  nothin'!  Curtiss  and 
Brookins  and  Hoxsey  have  all  made  longer  flights  than 
mine,  in  this  country  alone,  and  they're  aviators  I'm  not 
worthy  to  fill  the  gas-tanks  of.  ...  Gee!  I'm  sleepy!  Got 
to  look  polite,  but  I  wish  I  could  beat  it.  ...  Let's  see. 
Now  look  here,  young  Carl;  starting  in  to-morrow,  you  be- 
gin to  read  oodles  of  books.  Let's  see.  I'll  start  out  with 

200 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Forrest's  favorites.  There's  David  Copperfield,  and  that 
book  by  Wells,  Tono-Bungay,  that's  got  aerial  experiments 
in  it,  and  Jude  the  Ob — ,  Obscure,  I  guess  it  is,  and  The 
Damnation  of  Theron  Ware  (wonder  what  he  damned), 
and  McTeague,  and  Walden,  and  War  and  Peace,  and 
Madame  Bovary,  and  some  Turgenev  and  some  Balzac. 
And  something  more  serious.  Guess  I'll  try  William 
James's  book  on  psychology." 

He  bought  them  all  next  morning.  His  other  be- 
longings had  been  suited  to  rapid  transportation,  and 
Martin  Dockerill  grumbled,  "That's  a  swell  line  of  bag- 
gage, all  right — one  tooth-brush,  -a  change  of  socks,  and 
ninety-seven  thousand  books." 

Two  nights  later,  in  a  hotel  at  Portland,  Maine,  Carl 
was  plowing  through  the  Psychology.  He  hated  study. 
He  flipped  the  pages  angrily,  and  ran  his  fingers  through 
his  corn-colored  hair.  But  he  sped  on,  concentrated, 
stopping  only  to  picture  a  day  when  the  people  who 
honored  him  publicly  would  also  know  him  in  private. 
Somewhere  among  them,  he  believed,  was  the  girl  with 
whom  he  could  play.  He  would  meet  her  at  some  aero 
race,  and  she  would  welcome  him  as  eagerly  as  he  welcomed 
her.  .  .  .  Had  he,  perhaps,  already  met  her?  He  walked 
over  to  the  writing-table  and  scrawled  a  note  to  Gertie 
Cowles — regarding  the  beauty  of  the  Yale  campus. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

(Editor's  Note:  The  following  pages  are  extracts  from  a  diary 
kept  by  Mr.  C.  O.  Ericson  in  a  desultory  fashion  from  January, 
1911,  to  the  end  of  April,  1912.  They  are  reprinted  quite 
literally.  Apparently  Mr.  Ericson  had  no  very  precise  purpose 
in  keeping  his  journal.  At  times  it  seems  intended  as  materia 
for  future  literary  use;  at  others,  as  comments  for  his  own 
future  amusement;  at  still  others,  as  a  sort  of  long  letter  to 
be  later  sent  to  his  friend,  Lieut.  Forrest  Haviland,  U.S.A.  I 
have  already  referred  to  them  in  my  Psycho-analysis  of  the  Sub- 
conscious with  Reference  to  Active  Temperaments,  but  here  reprint 
them  less  for  their  appeal  to  us  as  a  scientific  study  of  reactions 
than  as  possessing,  doubtless,  for  those  interested  in  pure  nar- 
rative, a  certain  curt  expression  of  somewhat  unusual  exploits, 
however  inferior  is  their  style  to  a  more  critical  thesis  on  the 
adventurous.) 


9,  (1911)-  Arrived  at  Mineola  flying  field, 
N.  Y.  to  try  out  new  Bagby  monoplane  I  have 
bought.  Not  much  accomodation  here  yet.  Many  of 
us  housed  in  tents.  Not  enough  hangars.  We  sit 
around  and  tell  lies  in  the  long  grass  at  night,  like  a 
bunch  of  kids  out  camping.  Went  over  and  had  a  beer 
at  Peter  McLoughlin's  today,  that's  where  Glenn  Curtiss 
started  out  from  to  make  his  first  flight  for  Sci.  Amer. 
cup. 

Like  my  new  Bagby  machine  better  than  Bleriot  in 
many  respects,  has  non-lifting  tail,  as  should  all  modern 
machines.  Rudder  and  elevator  a  good  deal  like  the 
Nieuport.  One  passenger.  Roomy  cockpit  and  en- 
closed fuselage.  Bleriot  control.  Nearer  streamline  than 

202 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

any  American  plane  yet.  Span,  33.6  ft.,  length  24,  chord 
of  wing  at  fuselage  6'  5".  Chauviere  propeller,  6'  6", 
pitch  4'  5".  Dandy  new  Gnome  engine,  70  h.p.,  should 
develop  60  to  80  m.p.h. 

Martin  Dockerill  my  mechanician  is  pretty  cute.  He 
said  to  me  today  when  we  were  getting  work-bench  up, 
"I  bet  a  hat  the  spectators  all  flock  here,  now.  Not 
that  you're  any  better  flier  than  some  of  the  other  boys, 
but  you  got  the  newest  plane  for  them  to  write  their 
names  on." 

Certainly  a  scad  of  people  butting  in.  Come  in  autos 
and  motor  cycles  and  on  foot,  and  stand  around  watching 
everything  you  do  till  you  want  to  fire  a  monkey  wrench 
at  them. 

Hank  Odell  has  joined  the  Associated  Order  of  the 
Pyramid  and  just  now  he  is  sitting  out  in  front  of  his  tent 
talking  to  some  of  the  Grand  Worthy  High  Mighties  of  it 
I  guess — fat  old  boy  with  a  yachting  cap  and  a  big  brass 
watch  chain  and  an  Order  of  Pyramid  charm  big  as  your 
thumb,  and  a  tough  young  fellow  with  a  black  sateen  shirt 
and  his  hat  on  sideways  with  a  cigarette  hanging  out  of 
one  corner  of  his  mouth. 

Since  I  wrote  the  above  a  party  of  sports,  the  women 
in  fade-away  gowns  made  to  show  their  streamline  forms 
came  butting  in,  poking  their  fingers  at  everything,  while 
the  slob  that  owned  their  car  explained  everything  wrong. 
"This  is  a  biplane,"  he  says,  "you  can  see  there's  a  plane 
sticking  out  on  each  side  of  the  place  where  the  aviator 
sits,  it's  a  new  areoplane  (that's  the  way  he  pronounced 
it),  and  that  dingus  in  front  is  a  whirling  motor."  I  was 
sitting  here  at  the  work-bench,  writing,  hot  as  hell  and 
sweaty  and  in  khaki  pants  and  soft  shirt  and  black 
sneakers,  and  the  Big  Boss  comes  over  to  me  and  says, 
"Where  is  Hawk  Ericson,  my  man."  "How  do  I  know," 
I  says.  "When  will  he  be  back,"  says  he,  as  though  he 
was  thinking  of  getting  me  fired  p.  d.  q.  for  being  fresh. 
"Next  week.  He  ain't  come  yet." 
14  203 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

He  gets  sore  and  says,  "See  here,  my  man,  I  read  in 
the  papers  today  that  he  has  just  joined  the  flying  colony. 
Permit  me  to  inform  you  that  he  is  a  very  good  friend  of 
mine.  If  you  will  ask  him,  I  am  quite  sure  that  he  will 
remember  Mr.  Porter  Carruthers,  who  was  introduced  to 
him  at  the  Belmont  Park  Meet.  Now  if  you  will  be  so 

good  as  to  show  the  ladies  and  myself  about "     Well, 

I  asked  Hawk,  and  Hawk  seemed  to  be  unable  to  remember 
his  friend  Mr.  Carruthers,  who  was  one  of  the  thousand 
or  so  people  recently  introduced  to  him,  but  he  told  me 
to  show  them  about,  which  I  did,  and  told  them  the 
Gnome  was  built  radial  to  save  room,  and  the  wires  over- 
head were  a  frame  for  a  little  roof  for  bad  weather,  and 
they  gasped  and  nodded  to  every  fool  thing  I  said,  swal- 
lowed it  hook  line  and  sinker  till  one  of  the  females 
showed  her  interest  by  saying  "How  fascinating,  let's 
go  over  to  the  Garden  City  Hotel,  Porter,  I'm  dying  for 
a  drink."  I  hope  she  died  for  it. 

May  10:  Up  at  three,  trying  out  machine.  Smashed 
landing  chassis  in  coming  down,  shook  me  up  a  little. 
Interesting  how  when  I  rose  it  was  dark  on  the  ground 
but  once  up  was  a  little  red  in  the  east  like  smoke  from 
a  regular  fairy  city. 

Another  author  out  today  bothering  me  for  what  he 
called  "copy." 

Must  say  I've  met  some  darn  decent  people  in  this  game 
though.  Today  there  was  a  girl  came  out  with  Billy 
Morrison  of  the  N.  Y.  Courier,  she  is  an  artist  but 
crazy  about  outdoor  life,  etc.  Named  Istra  Nash,  a 
red  haired  girl,  slim  as  a  match  but  the  strangest  face, 
pale  but  it  lights  up  when  she's  talking  to  you.  Took 
her  up  and  she  was  not  scared,  most  are. 

May  ii :  Miss  Istra  Nash  came  out  by  herself.  She's 
thinking  quite  seriously  about  learning  to  fly.  .She  sat 
around  and  watched  me  work,  and  when  nobody  was 
looking  smoked  a  cigarette.  Has  recently  been  in  Europe, 
Paris,  London,  etc. 

204 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Somehow  when  I'm  talking  to  a  woman  like  her  I 
realize  how  little  I  see  of  women  with  whom  I  can  be 
really  chummy,  tho  I  meet  so  many  people  at  receptions 
etc.  sometimes  just  after  I  have  been  flying  before  thou- 
sands of  people  I  beat  it  to  my  hotel  and  would  be  glad 
for  a  good  chat  with  the  night  clerk,  of  course  I  can  bank 
on  Martin  Dockerill  to  the  limit  but  when  I  talk  to  a 
person  like  Miss  Nash  I  realize  I  need  some  one  who  knows 
good  art  from  bad.  Though  Miss  Nash  doesn't  insist 
on  talking  like  a  highbrow,  indeed  is  picking  up  aviation 
technologies  very  quickly.  She  talks  German  like  a  native. 

Think  Miss  Nash  is  perhaps  older  than  I  am,  perhaps 
couple  of  years,  but  doesn't  make  any  difference. 

Reading  a  little  German  tonight,  almost  forgot  what 
I  learned  of  it  in  Plato. 

May  14,  Sunday:  Went  into  town  this  afternoon  and 
went  with  Istra  to  dinner  at  the  Lafayette.  She  told  me 
all  about  her  experiences  in  Paris  and  studying  art.  She 
is  quite  discontented  here  in  N.  Y.  I  don't  blame  her 
much,  it  must  have  been  bully  over  in  Paree.  We  sat 
talking  till  ten.  Like  to  see  Vedrines  fly,  and  the  Louvre 
and  the  gay  grisettes  too  by  heck!  Istra  ought  not  to 
drink  so  many  cordials,  nix  on  the  booze  you  learn  when 
you  try  to  keep  in  shape  for  flying,  though  Tad  Warren 
doesn't  seem  to  learn  it.  After  ten  we  went  to  studio 
where  Istra  is  staying  on  Washington  Sq.  several  of  her 
friends  there  and  usual  excitement  and  fool  questions 
about  being  an  aviator,  it  always  makes  me  feel  like  a 
boob.  But  they  saw  Istra  and  I  wanted  to  be  alone  and 
they  beat  it. 

This  is  really  dawn  but  I'll  date  it  May  14,  which  is 
yesterday.  No  sleep  for  me  tonight,  I'm  afraid.  Going 
to  fly  around  NY  in  aerial  derby  this  afternoon,  must 
get  plenty  sleep  now. 

May  15:  Won  derby,  not  much  of  an  event  though. 
Struck  rotten  currents  over  Harlem  River,  machine  rolled 
like  a  whale-back. 

205 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Istra  out  here  tomorrow.  Glad.  But  after  last  night 
afraid  I'll  get  so  I  depend  on  her,  and  the  aviator  that 
keeps  his  nerve  has  to  be  sort  of  a  friendless  cuss  some 
ways. 

May  16:  Istra  came  out  here.  Seems  very  discon- 
tented. I'm  afraid  she's  the  kind  to  want  novelty  and 
attention  incessantly,  she  seems  to  forget  that  I'm  pretty 
busy. 

May  17:  Saw  Istra  in  town,  she  forgot  all  her  discon- 
tent and  her  everlasting  dignity  and  danced  for  me  then 
came  over  and  kissed  me,  she  is  truly  a  wonder,  can  hum 
a  French  song  so  you  think  you're  among  the  peasants, 
but  she  expects  absolute  devotion  and  constant  amusing 
and  I  must  stick  to  my  last  if  a  mechanic  like  me  is  to 
amount  to  anything. 

May  18:  Istra  out  here,  she  sat  around  and  looked 
bored,  wanted  to  make  me  sore,  I  think.  When  I  told 
her  I  had  to  leave  tomorrow  morning  for  Rochester  and 
couldn't  come  to  town  for  dinner  etc.  she  flounced  home. 
I'm  sorry,  I'm  mighty  sorry;  poor  kid  she's  always  going 
to  be  discontented  wherever  she  is,  and  always  getting 
some  one  and  herself  all  wrought  up.  She  always  wants 
new  sensations  yet  doesn't  want  to  work,  and  the  com- 
bination isn't  very  good.  It'd  be  great  if  she  really 
worked  at  her  painting,  but  she  usually  stops  her  art 
just  this  side  of  the  handle  of  a  paint-brush. 

Curious  thing  is  that  when  she'd  gone  and  I  sat 
thinking  about  her  I  didn't  miss  her  so  much  as  Gertie 
Cowles.  I  hope  I  see  Gertie  again  some  day,  she  is  a 
good  pal. 

Istra  wanted  me  to  name  my  new  monoplane  Babette, 
because  she  says  it  looks  "cunning"  which  the  Lord  knows 
it  don't,  it  may  look  efficient  but  not  cunning.  But  I 
don't  think  I'll  name  it  anything,  tho  she  says  that  shows 
lack  of  imagination. 

People  especially  reporters  are  aiways  asking  me  this 
question,  do  aviators  have  imagination?  I'm  not  sure 

206 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

I  know  what  imagination  is.  It's  like  this  stuff  about 
"sense  of  humor."  Both  phrases  are  pretty  bankrupt 
now.  A  few  years  ago  when  I  was  running  a  car  I  would 
make  believe  I  was  different  people,  like  a  king  driving 
through  his  kingdom,  but  when  I'm  warping  and  banking 
I  don't  have  time  to  think  about  making  believe.  Of 
course  I  do  notice  sunsets  and  so  on  a  good  deal  but  that 
is  not  imagination.  And  I  do  like  to  go  different  places; 
possibly  I  take  the  imagination  out  that  way — I  guess 
imagination  is  partly  wanting  to  be  places  where  you 
aren't — well,  I  go  when  I  want  to,  and  I  like  that 
better. 

Anyway  darned  if  I'll  give  my  monoplane  a  name. 
Tad  Warren  has  been  married  to  a  musical  comedy  sou- 
brette  with  ringlets  of  red-brown  hair  (Istra's  hair  is 
quite  bright  red,  but  this  woman  has  dark  red  hair,  like 
the  color  of  California  redwood  chips,  no  maybe  darker) 
and  she  wears  a  slimpsy  bright  blue  dress  with  the  waist- 
line nearly  down  to  her  knees,  and  skirt  pietty  short, 
showing  a  lot  of  ankle,  and  a  kind  of  hat  I  never  noticed 
before,  must  be  getting  stylish  now  I  guess,  flops  down 
so  it  almost  hides  her  face  like  a  basket.  She's  a  typical 
wife  for  a  10  h.p.  aviator  with  exhibition  fever.  She  and 
Tad  go  joy  riding  almost  every  night  with  a  bunch  of 
gasoline  and  alcohol  sports  and  all  have  about  five  cock- 
tails and  dance  a  new  Calif,  dance  called  the  Turkey 
Trot.  This  bunch  have  named  Tad's  new  Wright 
"Sammy,"  and  they  think  it's  quite  funny  to  yell  "Hello 
Sammy,  how  are  you,  come  have  a  drink." 

I  guess  I'll  call  mine  a  monoplane  and  let  it  go  at 
that. 

July  14:  Quebec.  Lost  race  Toronto  to  Quebec. 
Had  fair  chance  to  win  but  motor  kept  misfiring,  couldn't 
seem  to  get  plugs  that  would  work,  and  smashed  hell  out 
of  elevator  coming  down  on  tail  when  landing  here. 
Glad  Hank  Odell  won,  since  I  lost.  Hank  has  designed 

207 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

new  rocker-arm  for  Severn  motor  valves.  All  of  us  in- 
vited to  usual  big  dinner,  never  did  see  so  many  uniforms, 
also  members  of  Canadian  parliament.  I  don't  like  to 
lose  a  race,  but  thunder  it  doesn't  bother  me  long.  Good 
filet  of  sole  at  dinner.  Sat  near  a  young  lieutenant,  leften- 
ant  I  suppose  it  is,  who  made  me  think  of  Forrest  Havi- 
land.  I  miss  Forrest  a  lot.  He's  doing  some  good  flying 
for  the  army,  flying  Curtiss  hydro  now,  and  trying  out 
muffler  for  military  scouting.  What  I  like  as  much  as 
anything  about  him  is  his  ease,  I  hope  I'm  learning  a  little 
of  it  anyway.  This  stuff  is  all  confused  but  must  hustle 
off  to  reception  at  summer  school  of  Royal  College  for 
Females.  Must  send  all  this  to  old  Forrest  to  read 
some  day  —  if  you  ever  see  this,  Forrest,  hello,  dear 
old  man,  I  thought  about  you  when  I  flew  over  military 
post. 

Later:  Big  reception,  felt  like  an  awful  nut,  so  shy  I 
didn't  hardly  dare  look  up  off  the  ground.  After  the 
formal  reception  I  was  taken  around  the  campus  by  the 
Lady  President,  nice  old  lady  with  white  hair  and  dia- 
mond combs  in  it.  What  seemed  more  than  a  million 
pretty  girls  kept  dodging  out  of  doorways  and  making 
snapshots  of  me.  Good  thing  I've  been  reading  quite  a 
little  lately,  as  the  Lady  Principal  (that  was  it,  not  Lady 
President)  talked  very  high  brow.  She  asked  me  what  I 
thought  of  this  "terrible  lower  class  unrest."  Told  her  I 
was  a  socialist  and  she  never  batted  an  eye — of  course  an 
aviator  is  permitted  to  be  a  nut.  Wonder  if  I  am  a  good 
socialist  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  do  know  that  most  govern- 
ments, maybe  all,  permit  most  children  to  never  have  a 
chance,  start  them  out  by  choking  them  with  dirt  and 
T.B.  germs,  but  how  can  we  make  international  solidarity 
seem  practical  to  the  dub  average  voters,  how! 

Letter  from  Gertie  tonight,  forwarded  here.  She  seems 
sort  of  bored  in  Joralemon,  but  .is  working  hard  with 
Village  Improvement  Committee  of  woman's  club  for 
rest  room  for  farmers'  wives,  also  getting  up  P.E.  Sunday 

208 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

school  picnic.  Be  good  for  Istra  if  she  did  common  nice 
things  like  that,  since  she  won't  really  get  busy  with  her 
painting,  but  how  she'd  hate  me  for  suggesting  that  she 
be  what  she  calls  "  burjoice."  Guess  Gertie  is  finding  her- 
self. Hope  yours  truly  but  sleepy  is  finding  himself  too. 
How  I  love  my  little  bed! 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

(THE  DIARY  OF  MR.  ERICSON,  CONTINUED. — EDITOR) 

AUGUST  20,  (1911,  as  before):  Big  Chicago  meet 
-"  over.  They  sure  did  show  us  a  good  time.  Never 
saw  better  meet.  Won  finals  in  duration  today.  Also 
am  second  in  altitude,  but  nix  on  the  altitude  again,  Fm 
pretty  poor  at  it.  I'm  no  Lincoln  Beachey!  Don't  see 
how  he  breathes.  His  11,578  ft.  was  some  climb. 

Tomorrow  starts  my  biggest  attempt,  by  far;  biggest 
distance  flight  ever  tried  in  America,  and  rather  niftier 
than  even  the  European  Circuit  and  British  Circuit  that 
Beaumont  has  won. 

To  fly  as  follows:  Chicago  to  St.  Louis  to  Indianapolis 
to  Columbus  to  Washington  to  Baltimore  to  Philadelphia 
to  Atlantic  City  to  New  York.  The  New  York  Chronicle 
in  company  with  papers  along  line  gives  prize  of  $40,000. 
Ought  to  help  bank  account  if  win,  in  spite  of  big  ex- 
penses to  undergo.  Now  have  $30,000  stowed  away, 
and  have  sent  mother  $3,000. 

To  fly  against  my  good  old  teacher  M.  Carmeau,  and 
Tony  Bean,  Walter  MacMonnies,  M.  Beaufort  the 
Frenchman,  Tad  Warren,  Billy  Witzer,  Chick  Bannard, 
Aaron  Solomons  and  other  good  men.  Special  NY 
Chronicle  reporter,  fellow  named  Forbes,  assigned  to 
me,  and  he  hangs  around  all  the  time,  sort  of  embarrass- 
ing (hurray,  spelled  it  right,  I  guess)  but  I'm  getting  used 
to  the  reporters. 

Martin  Dockerill  has  an  ambition!  He  said  to  me 
today,  "Say,  Hawk,  if  you  win  the  big  race  you  got  to 

210 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

give  me  five  plunks  for  my  shaie  and  then  by  gum  I'm 
going  to  buy  two  razor-strops."  "What  for?"  I  said. 
"Oh  I  bet  there  ain't  anybody  else  in  the  world  that  owns 
two  razor-strops!" 

Not  much  to  say  about  banquet,  lots  of  speeches,  good 
grub. 

What  tickles  me  more  than  anything  is  my  new  flying 
garments — not  clothes  but  garments,  by  heck !  I'm  going 
to  be  a  regular  little  old  aviator  in  a  melodrama.  I've 
been  wearing  plain  suits  and  a  cap,  same  good  old  cap, 
always  squeegee  on  my  head.  But  for  the  big  race  I've 
got  riding  breeches  and  puttees  and  a  silk  shirt  and  a 
tweed  Norfolk  jacket  and  new  leather  coat  and  French 
helmet  with  both  felt  and  springs  inside  the  leather — this 
last  really  valuable.  The  real  stage  aviator,  that's  me. 
Watch  the  photographers  fall  for  it.  I  bet  Tad  Warren's 
Norfolk  jacket  is  worth  $10,000  a  year  to  him! 

I  pretended  to  Martin  that  I  was  quite  serious  about 
the  clothes,  the  garments  I  mean.  I  dolled  myself  all 
up  last  night  and  went  swelling  into  my  hangar  and 
anxiously  asked  Martin  if  he  didn't  like  the  get-up,  and 
he  nearly  threw  a  fit.  "Good  Lord,"  he  groans,  "you 
look  like  an  aviator  on  a  Ladies  Home  Journal  cover, 
guaranteed  not  to  curse,  swear  or  chaw  tobacco.  What's 
become  of  that  girl  you  was  kissing,  last  time  I  seen  you 
on  the  cover?" 

August  25:  Not  much  time  to  write  diary  on  race  like 
this,  it's  just  saw  wood  all  the  time  or  lose. 

Bad  wind  today.  Sometimes  the  wind  don't  bother 
me  when  I  am  flying,  and  sometimes,  like  today,  it  seems 
as  though  the  one  thing  in  the  whole  confounded  world 
is  the  confounded  wind  that  roars  in  your  ears  and  makes 
your  eyes  water  and  sneaks  down  your  collar  to  chill  your 
spine  and  goes  scooting  up  your  sleeves,  unless  you  have 
gauntlets,  and  makes  your  ears  sting.  Roar,  roar,  roar, 
the  wind's  worse  than  the  noisiest  old  cast-iron  tin-can 
Vrenskoy  motor.  You  want  to  duck  your  head  and  get 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

down  out  of  it,  and  Lord  it  tires  you  so — aviation  isn't 
all  "brilliant  risks"  and  "daring  dives"  and  that  kind 
.of  blankety-blank  circus  business,  not  by  a  long  shot  it 
ain't,  lots  of  it  is  just  sticking  there  and  bucking  the  wind 
like  a  taxi  driver  speeding  for  a  train  in  a  storm.  Tired 
tonight  and  mad. 

Septembers:  New  York!  I  win!  Plenty  smashes  but 
only  got  jarred.  I  beat  out  Beaufort  by  eight  hours,  and 
Aaron  Solomons  by  nearly  a  day.  Carmeau's  machine 
hopelessly  smashed  in  Columbus,  but  he  was  not  hurt, 
but  poor  Tad  Warren  killed  crossing  Illinois. 

September  8:  Had  no  time  to  write  about  my  recep- 
tion here  in  New  York  till  now. 

I've  been  worrying  about  poor  Tad  Warren's  wife, 
bunch  of  us  got  together  and  made  up  a  purse  for  her. 
Nothing  more  pathetic  than  these  poor  little  women  that 
poke  down  the  cocktails  to  keep  excited  and  then  go  to 
pieces. 

I  don't  believe  I  was  very  decent  to  Tad.  Sitting  here 
alone  in  a  hotel  room,  it  seems  twice  as  lonely  after  the 
Fuss  and  feathers  these  last  few  days,  a  fellow  thinks  of 
all  the  rotten  things  he  ever  did.  Poor  old  Tad.  Too 
late  now  to  cheer  him  up.  Too  late.  Wonder  if  they 
shouldn't  have  called  off  race  when  he  was  killed. 

Wish  Istra  wouldn't  keep  calling  me  up.  Have  I  got 
to  be  rude  to  her?  I'd  like  to  be  decent  to  her,  but  I 
can't  stand  the  cocktail  life.  Lord,  that  time  she  danced, 
though. 

Poor  Tad  was 

Oh  hell,  to  get  back  to  the  reception.  It  was  pretty 
big.  Parade  of  the  Aero  Club  and  Squadron  A,  me  in 
an  open-face  hack,  feeling  like  a  boob  while  sixty  leven 
billion  people  cheered.  Then  reception  by  mayor,  me 
delivering  letter  from  mayor  of  Chicago  which  I  had 
cutely  sneaked  out  in  Chicago  and  mailed  to  myself  here, 
N.  Y.  general  delivery,  so  I  wouldn't  lose  it  on  the  way. 
Then  biggest  dinner  I've  ever  seen,  must  have  been  a 

212 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

thousand  there,  at  the  Astor,  me  very  natty  in  a  new  dress 
suit  (hey  bo,  I  fooled  them,  it  was  ready-made  and  cost 
me  just  $37.50  and  fitted  like  my  skin.) 

Mayor,  presidents  of  boroughs  of  NY,  district  attorney, 
vice  president  of  U.S.,  lieut.  governor  of  NY,  five  or  six 
senators,  chief  of  ordnance,  U.S.A.,  artic  explorers  and 
hundreds  like  that,  but  most  of  all  Forrest  Haviland  whom 
I  got  them  to  stick  right  up  near  me.  Speeches  mostly 
about  me,  I  nearly  rubbed  the  silver  off  my  flossy  new 
cigarette  case  keeping  from  looking  foolish  while  they 
were  telling  about  me  and  the  future  of  aviation  and  all 
them  interesting  subjects. 

Forrest  and  I  sneaked  off  from  the  reporters  next  after- 
noon, had  quiet  dinner  down  in  Chinatown. 

We  have  a  bully  plan.  If  we  can  make  it  and  if  he 
can  get  leave  we  will  explore  the  headwaters  of  the  Amazon 
with  a  two-passenger  Curtiss  flying  boat,  maybe  next 
year. 

Now  the  reception  fans  have  done  their  darndest  and 
all  the  excitement  is  over  including  the  shouting  and  I'm 
starting  for  Newport  to  hold  a  little  private  meet  of  my 
own,  backed  by  Thomas  J.  Watersell,  the  steel  magnate, 
and  by  tomorrow  night  NY  will  forget  me.  I  realized 
that  after  the  big  dinner.  I  got  on  the  subway  at  Times 
Square,  jumped  quick  into  the  car  just  as  the  doors  were 
closing,  and  the  guard  yapped  at  me,  "What  are  you  try- 
ing to  do,  Billy,  kill  yourself?"  He  wasn't  spending  much 
time  thinking  about  famous  Hawk  Ericson,  and  I  got  to 
thinking  how  comfortable  NY  will  manage  to  go  on 
being  when  they  no  longer  read  in  the  morning  paper 
whether  I  dined  with  the  governor,  or  with  Martin  Dock- 
erill  at  Bazoo  Junction  Depot  Lunch  Counter. 

They  forget  us  quick.  And  already  there's  a  new  gen- 
eration of  aviators.  Some  of  the  old  giants  are  gone, 
poor  Moisant  and  Hoxsey  and  Johnstone  and  the  rest 
killed,  and  there's  coming  along  a  bunch  of  youngsters 
that  can  fly  enough  to  grab  the  glory,  and  they  spread 

213 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

out  the  glory  pretty  thin.  They  go  us  old  fellows  ex- 
cept Beachey  a  few  better  on  aerial  acrobatics,  and  that's 
what  the  dear  pee-pul  like.  (For  a  socialist  I  certainly  do 
despise  the  pee-pul's  taste!)  I  won't  do  any  flipflops  in 
the  air  no  matter  what  the  county  fair  managers  write 
me.  Somehow  I'd  just  as  soon  be  alive  and  exploring 
the  Amazon  with  old  Forrest  as  dead  after  "  brilliant  feats 
of  fearless  daring."  Go  to  it,  kids,  good  luck,  only  test 
your  supporting  wires,  and  don't  try  to  rival  Lincoln 
Beachey,  he's  a  genius. 

Glad  got  a  secretary  for  a  couple  days  to  handle  all 
this  mail.  Hundreds  of  begging  letters  and  mash  notes 
from  girls  since  I  won  the  big  prize.  Makes  me  feel 
funny!  One  nice  thing  out  of  the  mail — letter  from  the 
Turk,  Jack  Terry,  that  I  haven't  seen  since  Plato.  He 
didn't  graduate,  his  old  man  died  and  he  is  assistant 
manager  of  quite  a  good  sized  fisheries  out  in  Oregon, 
glad  to  hear  from  him  again.  Funny,  I  haven't  thought 
of  him  for  a  year. 

I  feel  lonely  and  melancholy  tonight  in  spite  of  all  I 
do  to  cheer  up.  Let  up  after  reception  etc.  I  suppose. 
I  feel  like  calling  up  Istra,  after  all,  but  mustn't.  I 
ought  to  hit  the  hay,  but  I  couldn't  sleep.  Poor  Tad 
Warren. 

(The  following  words  appear  at  the  bottom  of  a  page,  in  a 
faint,  fine  handwriting  unlike  Mr.  Ericson's  usual  scrawl. 
—The  Editor'): 

Whatever  spirits  there  be,  of  the  present  world  or  the 
future,  take  this  prayer  from  a  plain  man  who  knows 
little  of  monism  or  trinity  or  logos,  and  give  to  Tad  an- 
other chance,  as  a  child  who  never  grew  up. 

September  n:  Off  to  Kokomo,  to  fly  for  Farmers' 
Alliance. 

Easy  meet  here  (Newport,  R.I.)  yesterday,  just  straight 
flying  and  passenger  carrying.  Dandy  party  given  for 
me  after  it,  by  Thomas  J.  Watersell,  the  steel  man.  Have 

214 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

read  of  such  parties.  Bird  party,  in  a  garden,  Watersell 
has  many  acres  in  his  place  and  big  house  with  a  wonder- 
ful brick  terrace  and  more  darn  convenient  things  than  I 
ever  saw  before,  breakfast  room  out  on  the  terrace  and 
swimming  pool  and  little  gardens  one  outside  of  each 
guest  room,  rooms  all  have  private  doors,  house  is  mission 
style  built  around  patio.  All  the  Newport  swells  came  to 
party  dressed  as  birds,  and  I  had  to  dress  as  a  hawk,  they 
had  the  costume  all  ready,  wonder  how  they  got  my 
measurements.  Girls  in  the  dance  of  the  birds.  Much 
silk  stockings,  very  pretty.  At  end  of  dance  they  were 
all  surrounding  me  in  semi-circle  I  stood  out  on  lawn 
beside  Mrs.  Watersell,  and  they  bowed  low  to  me,  flut- 
tering their  silk  wings  and  flashing  out  many  colored 
electric  globes  concealed  in  wings  and  looked  like  hun- 
dreds of  rainbow  colored  fireflies  in  the  darkness.  Just 
then  the  big  lights  were  turned  on  again  and  they  let 
loose  hundreds  of  all  kinds  of  birds,  and  they  flew  up  all 
around  me,  surprised  me  to  death.  Then  for  grub,  best 
sandwiches  I  ever  ate. 

Felt  much  flattered  by  it  all,  somehow  did  not  feel  so 
foolish  as  at  banquets  with  speeches. 

After  the  party  was  all  over,  quite  late,  I  went  with 
Watersell  for  a  swim  in  his  private  pool.  Most  remark- 
able thing  I  ever  saw.  He  said  everybody  has  Roman 
baths  and  Pompei  baths  and  he  was  going  to  go  them  one 
better,  so  he  has  an  Egyptian  bath,  the  pool  itself  like 
the  inside  of  an  ancient  temple,  long  vista  of  great  big 
green  columns  and  a  big  idol  at  the  end,  and  the  pool  all 
in  green  marble  with  lights  underneath  the  water  and 
among  the  columns,  and  the  water  itself  just  heat  of  air, 
so  you  can't  tell  where  the  water  leaves  off  and  the  air 
above  it  begins,  hardly,  and  feel  as  though  you  were 
swimming  in  air  through  a  green  twilight.  Darndest 
sensation  I  ever  felt,  and  the  idol  and  columns  sort  of 
awe  you. 

I  enjoyed  the  swim  and  the  room  they  gave  me,  but 

215 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

I  had  lost  my  toothbrush  and  that  kind  of  spoiled  the 
end  of  the  party. 

I  noticed  Watersell  only  half  introduced  his  pretty 

daughter  to  me,  they  like  me  as  a  lion  but And 

yet  they  seem  to  like  me  personally  well  enough,  too.  If 
I  didn't  have  old  Martin  trailing  along,  smoking  his  corn- 
cob pipe  and  saying  what  he  thinks,  I'd  die  of  loneliness 
sometimes  on  the  hike  from  meet  to  meet.  Other  times 
have  jolly  parties,  but  I'd  like  to  sit  down  with  the  Cowleses 
and  play  poker  and  not  have  to  explain  who  I  am. 

Funny — never  used  to  feel  lonely  when  I  was  bum- 
ming around  on  freights  and  so  on,  not  paying  any  special 
attention  to  anybody. 

October  23:  I  wonder  how  far  I'll  ever  get  as  an  aviator? 
The  newspapers  all  praise  me  as  a  hero.  Hero,  hell! 
Pm  a  pretty  steady  flier  but  so  would  plenty  of  chauffeurs 
be.  This  hero  business  is  mostly  bunk,  it  was  mostly 
chance  my  starting  to  fly  at  all.  Don't  suppose  it  is  all 
accident  to  become  as  great  a  flier  as  Garros  or  Vedrines 
or  Beachey,  but  I'm  never  going  to  be  a  Garros,  I  guess. 
Like  the  man  that  can  jump  twelve  feet  but  never  can 
get  himself  to  go  any  farther. 

December  i:  Carmeau  killed  yesterday,  flying  at  San 
Antone.  Motor  backfire,  machine  caught  fire,  burned 
him  to  death  in  the  air.  He  was  the  best  teacher  I  could 
have  had,  patient  and  wise.  I  can't  write  about  him. 
And  I  can't  get  this  insane  question  out  of  my  mind: 
Was  his  beard  burned?  I  remember  just  how  it  looked, 
and  think  of  that  when  all  the  time  I  ought  to  remember 
how  clever  and  darn  decent  he  was.  Carmeau  will  never 
show  me  new  stunts  again. 

And  Ely  killed  in  October,  Cromwell  Dixon  gone — the 
plucky  youngster,  Professor  Montgomery,  Nieuport,  Todd 
Shriver  whom  Martin  Dockerill  and  Hank  Odell  liked  so 
much,  and  many  others,  all  dead,  like  Moisant.  I  don't 
think  I  take  any  undue  risks,  but  it  makes  me  stop  and 
think.  And  Hank  Odell  with  a  busted  shoulder.  Cap- 

216 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

tain  Paul  Beck  once  told  me  he  believed  it  was  mostly 
carelessness,  these  accidents,  and  he  certainly  is  a  good 
observer,  but  when  I  think  of  a  careful  constructor  like 
Nieuport 

Punk  money  I'm  making.  Thank  heaven  there  will 
be  one  more  good  year  of  the  game,  1912,  but  I  don't 
know  about  1913.  Looks  like  the  exhibition  game  would 
blow  up  then — nearly  everybody  that  wants  to  has  seen 
an  aeroplane  fly  once,  now,  and  that's  about  all  they 
want,  so  good  bye  aviation,  except  for  military  use  and 
flying  boats  for  sportsmen.  At  least  good  bye  during  a 
slump  of  several  years. 

Hope  to  thunder  Forrest  and  I  will  be  able  to  make  our 
South  American  hike,  even  if  it  costs  every  cent  I  have. 
That  will  be  something  like  it,  seeing  new  country  instead 
of  scrapping  with  fair  managers  about  money. 

December  22:  Hoorray!  Christmas  time  at  sea! 
Quite  excite  to  smell  the  ocean  again  and  go  rolling  down 
the  narrow  gangways  between  the  white  stateroom  doors. 
Off  for  a  month's  flying  in  Brazil  and  Argentine,  with 
Tony  Bean.  Will  look  up  data  for  coming  exploration 
of  Amazon  headwaters.  Martin  Dockerill  like  a  regular 
Beau  Brummel  in  new  white  flannels,  parading  the  deck, 
making  eyes  at  pretty  Greaser  girls.  It's  good  to  be  going. 

Feb.  22,  1912:  Geo.  W's  birthday.  He'd  have  busted 
that  no-lie  proviso  if  he'd  ever  advertised  an  aero  meet. 

Start  of  flight  New  Orleans  to  St.  Louis.  Looks  like 
really  big  times,  old  fashioned  jubilee  all  along  the  road 
and  lots  of  prizes,  though  take  a  chance.  Only  measly 
little  $2,500  prize  guaranteed,  but  vague  promises  of  win- 
nings at  towns  all  along,  where  stop  for  short  exhibitions. 
Each  of  contestants  has  to  fly  at  scheduled  towns  for 
percentage  of  gate  receipts. 

Feb.  2j:  What  a  rotten  flight  today.  Small  crowd 
out  to  see  me  off.  No  sooner  up  than  trouble  with  plugs. 
Wanted  to  land,  but  nothing  but  bayous,  rice  fields,  cane 

217 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

breaks,  and  marshes.  Farmer  shot  at  my  machine.  Soon 
motor  stopped  on  me  and  had  to  come  down  awhooping 
on  a  small  plowed  field.  Smashed  landing  gear  and  got 
an  awful  jar.  Nothing  serious  though.  It  was  two  hours 
before  a  local  blacksmith  and  I  repaired  chassis  and 
cleaned  plugs.  I  started  off  after  coaching  three  scared 
darkies  to  hold  the  tail,  while  the  blacksmith  spun  the 
propeller.  He  would  give  it  a  couple  of  bats,  then  dodge 
out  of  the  way  too  soon,  while  I  sat  there  and  tried  not 
to  look  mad,  which  by  gum  I  was  plenty  mad.  Landed 

in  this  bum  town,  called  ,  fourth  in  the  race,  and 

found  sweet  (?)  refuge  in  this  chills  and  fever  hotel. 
Wish  I  was  back  in  New  Orleans.  Cheer  up,  having 
others  ahead  of  me  in  the  race  just  adds  a  little  zip  to 
it.  Watch  me  tomorrow.  And  I'm  not  the  only  hard 
luck  artist.  Aaron  Solomons  busted  propeller  and  nearly 
got  killed. 

Later.  Cable.  Tony  Bean  is  dead.  Killed  flying. 
My  god,  Tony,  impossible  to  think  of  him  as  dead,  just  a 
few  days  ago  we  were  flying  together  and  calling  on 
senoritas  and  he  playing  the  fiddle  and  laughing,  always 
so  polite,  like  he  used  to  fiddle  us  into  good  nature  when 
we  got  discouraged  at  Bagby's  school.  Seems  like  it  was 
just  couple  minutes  ago  we  drove  in  his  big  car  through 
Avenida  de  Mayo  and  everybody  cheered  him,  he  was 
hero  of  Buenos  Aires,  yet  he  treated  me  as  the  Big  Chief. 
Cablegram  forwarded  from  New  Orleans,  dated  yester- 
day, "Beanno  killed  fell  200  feet." 

And  tomorrow  I'll  have  to  be  out  and  jolly  the  rustic 
meet  managers  again.  Want  to  go  off  some  place  and 
be  quiet  and  think.  Wish  I  could  get  away,  be  off"  to 
South  America  with  Forrest. 

February  24:  Rotten  luck  continues.  Back  in  same 
town  again!  Got  up  yesterday  and  motor  misfired,  had 
to  make  quick  landing  in  a  bayou  and  haul  out  machine 
myself  aided  by  scared  kids.  Got  back  here  and  found 
gasoline  pipe  fouled,  small  piece  of  tin  stuck  in  it. 

218 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Martin  feels  as  bad  as  I  do  at  Tony's  death,  tho  he 
doesn't  say  much  of  anything.  "Gosh,  and  Tony  such 
a  nice  little  cuss,"  was  about  all  he  said,  but  he  looked 
white  around  the  gills. 

Feb.  25:  Another  man  has  dropped  out,  I  am  third 
but  still  last  in  the  race.  Race  fever  got  me  today,  didn't 
care  for  anything  but  winning,  got  off  to  a  good  start, 
then  took  chances,  machine  wobbled  like  a  board  in  the 
surf.  Am  having  some  funny  kind  of  chicken  creole  I 
guess  it  is  for  lunch,  writing  this  in  hotel  dining  room. 

Later:  Passed  Aaron  Solomons,  am  now  second  in  the 
race,  landed  here  just  three  hours  behind  Walter  Mac- 
Monnies.  Three  letters  forwarded  here,  from  Forrest, 
he  is  flying  daily  at  army  aviation  camp,  also  from  Gertie 
Cowles,  she  and  her  mother  are  in  Minneapolis,  attend- 
ing a  week  of  grand  opera,  also  to  my  surprise  short  note 
from  Jack  Ryan,  the  grouch,  saying  he  has  given  up  flying 
and  gone  back  into  motor  business. 

There  won't  be  much  more  than  money  to  pay  expenses 
on  this  trip. 

Tomorrow  I'll  show  them  some  real  flying. 

Later:  Telegram  from  a  St.  L.  newspaper.  Sweet 
business.  Says  that  promoters  of  race  have  not  kept 
promise  to  remove  time  limit  as  they  promised.  Doubt 
if  either  Walter  MacMonnies  or  I  can  finish  in  time  set. 

Feb.  26:  Bad  luck  continues  but  made  fast  flight  after 
two  forced  descents,  one  of  them  had  to  make  difficult 
landing,  plane  down  on  railroad  track,  avoiding  telegraph 
wires,  and  get  machine  off  track  as  could  hear  train  coming, 
awful  job.  Nerves  not  very  good.  Once  when  up  at  200 
ft.  heighth  from  which  Tony  Bean  fell,  I  saw  his  face 
right  in  air  in  front  of  me  and  jumped  so  I  jerked  the 
stuffings  out  of  control  wires. 


March    75:   Just   out  of  hospital,   after  three  weeks 
there,  broken  leg  still  in  splints.     Glad  Walter  MacM 
15  2I9 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

got  thru  in  time  limit,  got  prize.  Too  week  and  shaky 
write  much,  shoulder  still  hurts. 

March  18:  How  I  came  to  fall  (fall  that  broke  my  leg, 
three  weeks  ago)  Was  flying  over  rough  country  when 
bad  gust  came  thru  hill  defile.  Wing  crumpled.  Up  at 
400  ft.  Machine  plunged  forward  then  sideways.  Gosh, 
I  thought,  I'm  gone,  but  will  live  as  long  as  I  can,  even 
a  few  seconds  more,  and  kept  working  with  elevator,  try- 
ing to  right  her  even  a  little.  Ground  coming  up  fast. 
Must  have  jumped,  I  think.  Landed  in  marsh,  that 
saved  my  life,  but  woke  up  at  doctor's  house,  leg  busted 
and  shoulder  bad,  etc.  Machine  shot  to  pieces,  but 
Martin  Dockerill  has  it  pretty  well  repaired.  He  and  the 
doc  and  I  play  poker  every  day,  Martin  always  wins  with 
his  dog-gone  funeral  face  no  matter  tho  he  has  an  ace 
full. 

March  24:  Leg  all  right,  pretty  nearly.  Rigged  up 
steering  bar  so  I  can  work  it  with  one  foot.  Flew  a  mile 
today,  went  not  badly.  Hope  to  fly  at  Springfield,  111. 
meet  next  week.  Will  be  able  to  make  Brazil  trip  with 
Forrest  Haviland  all  right.  The  dear  old  boy  has  been 
writing  to  me  every  day  while  I've  been  on  the  bum. 
Newspapers  have  made  a  lot  of  my  flying  so  soon  again, 
several  engagements  and  now  things  look  bright  again. 
Reading  lots  and  chipper  as  can  be. 

March  25:  Forrest  Haviland  is  dead  He  was  killed 
today 

March  27:  Disposed  of  monoplane  by  telegraph.  Got 
Martin  job  with  Sunset  Aviation  Company. 

March  28:  Started  for  Europe. 


May  8,  Paris:  Forrest  and  I  would  have  met  today 
in  New  York  to  perfect  plans  for  Brazil  trip. 

May  10:  Am  still  trying  to  answer  letter  from  For- 
rest's father.  Can't  seem  to  make  it  go  right.  If  I  could 
have  seen  Forrest  again.  But  maybe  they  were  right, 

220 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

holding  funeral  before  I  could  get  there.  Captain  Faber 
says  Forrest  was  terribly  crushed,  falling  from  1700  ft. 
I  wish  I  didn't  keep  on  thinking  of  plans  for  our  Brazil 
trip,  then  remembering  we  won't  make  it  after  all.  I 
don't  think  I  will  fly  till  fall,  anyway,  though  I  feel 
stronger  now  after  rest  in  England,  Titherington  has 
beautiful  place  in  Devonshire.  England  seems  to  stick 
to  biplane,  can't  make  them  see  monoplane.  Don't  think 
I  shall  fly  before  fall.  Today  I  would  have  been  with 
Forrest  Haviland  in  New  York,  I  think  he  could  have  got 
leave  for  Brazil  trip.  We  would  taken  Martin.  Tony 
promised  to  meet  us  in  Rio.  I  like  France  but  can't  get 
used  to  language,  keep  starting  to  speak  Spanish.  Maybe 
I'll  fly  here  in  France  but  certainly  not  for  some  time, 
though  massage  has  fixed  me  all  O.K.  Am  studying 
French.  Maybe  shall  bicycle  thru  France.  Mem.:  Write 
to  Colonel  Haviland  when  I  can. 
Must  when  I  can. 


Part    III 
THE   ADVENTURE   OF    LOVE 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

IN  October,  1912,  a  young  man  came  with  an  enthu- 
siastic letter  from  the  president  of  the  Aero  Club  to  old 
Stephen  VanZile,  vice-president  and  general  manager  of 
the  VanZile  Motor  Corporation  of  New  York.  The 
young  man  was  quiet,  self-possessed,  an  expert  in  regard 
to  motors,  used  to  meeting  prominent  men.  He  was  im- 
mediately set  to  work  at  a  tentative  salary  of  $2,500  a  year, 
to  develop  the  plans  of  what  he  called  the  "Touricar" — 
an  automobile  with  all  camping  accessories,  which  should 
enable  motorists  to  travel  independent  of  inns,  add  the  joy 
of  camping  to  the  joy  of  touring,  and — a  feature  of  nearly 
all  inventions — add  money  to  the  purse  of  the  inventor. 

The  young  man  was  Carl  Ericson,  whom  Mr.  VanZile 
had  seen  fly  at  New  Orleans  during  the  preceding  Feb- 
ruary. Carl  had  got  the  idea  of  the  Touricar  while  wan- 
dering by  motor-cycle  through  Scandinavia  and  Russia. 

He  was,  at  this  time,  twenty-seven  years  old;  not  at 
all  remarkable  in  appearance  nor  to  be  considered  hand- 
some, but  so  clean,  so  well  bathed,  so  well  set-up  and 
evenly  tanned,  that  one  thought  of  the  swimming,  danc- 
ing, tennis-playing  city  men  of  good  summer  resorts,  an 
impression  enhanced  by  his  sleek  corn-silk  hair  and  small, 
pale  mustache.  His  clothes  came  from  London,  his 
watch-chain  was  a  thin  line  of  platinum  and  gold,  his 
cigarette-case  of  silver  engraved  in  inconspicuous  bands — 
a  modest  and  sophisticated  cigarette-case,  which  he  had 
possessed  long  enough  to  forget  that  he  had  it.  He  was 
apparently  too  much  the  easy,  well-bred,  rather  inexperi- 
enced Yale  or  Princeton  man  (not  Harvard;  there  was  a 
tiny  twang  in  his  voice,  and  he  sometimes  murmured 

225 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"Gee!")  to  know  much  about  life  or  work,  as  yet,  and  his 
smooth,  rosy  cheeks  made  it  absurdly  evident  that  he 
had  not  been  away  from  the  college  insulation  for  more 
than  two  years. 

But  when  he  got  to  work  with  draftsman  and  stenog- 
raphers, when  a  curt  kindliness  filled  his  voice,  he  proved 
to  be  concentrated,  unafraid  of  responsibility,  able  to 
keep  many  people  busy;  trained  to  something  besides 
family  tradition  and  the  collegians'  naive  belief  that  it 
matters  who  wins  the  Next  Game. 

His  hands  would  have  given  away  the  fact  that  he  had 
done  things.  They  were  large,  broad;  the  knuckles 
heavy;  the  palms  calloused  by  something  rougher  than 
oar  and  tennis-racket.  The  microscopic  traces  of  black 
grease  did  not  for  months  quite  come  out  of  the  cracks 
in  his  skin.  And  two  of  his  well-kept  but  thick  nails 
had  obviously  been  smashed. 

The  men  of  the  same  rank  as  himself  in  the  office,  cap- 
tains and  first  lieutenants  of  business,  said  that  he  "simply 
ate  up  work."  They  fancied,  with  the  eager  old-woman- 
ishness  of  office  gossip,  that  he  had  a  "secret  sorrow," 
for,  though  he  was  pleasant  enough,  he  kept  very  much 
to  himself.  The  cause  of  his  retirement  from  aviation 
was  the  theme  of  many  romantic  legends.  They  did  not 
know  precisely  what  it  was  he  had  done  in  the  prehistoric 
period  of  a  year  before,  but  they  treated  him  with  rever- 
ence instead  of  the  amused  aloofness  with  which  an  office 
usually  waits  to  see  whether  a  new  man  will  prove  to  be 
a  fool  or  a  "grouch,"  a  clown  or  a  good  fellow.  The 
stenographers  and  filing-girls  and  telephone-girls  followed 
with  yearning  eyes  the  hero's  straight  back.  The  girl 
who  discovered,  in  an  old  New  York  Chronicle  lining  a 
bureau  drawer,  an  interview  with  Carl,  became  very 
haughty  over  its  possession  and  lent  it  only  to  her  best 
lady  friends.  The  older  women,  who  knew  that  Carl 
had  had  a  serious  accident,  whispered  in  cloak-room 
confidences,  "Poor  fellow,  and  so  brave  about  it." 

226 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Yet  all  the  while  Carl's  china-blue  eyes  showed  no  trace 
of  pain  nor  sorrow  nor  that  detestable  appeal  for  sympathy 
called  "being  brave  about  his  troubles." 

There  were  many  thoughtful  features  which  fitted  the 
Touricar  for  use  in  camping — extra-sized  baggage-box 
whose  triangular  shape  made  the  car  more  nearly  stream- 
line, special  folding  silk  tents,  folding  aluminum  cooking- 
utensils,  electric  stove  run  by  current  from  the  car, 
electric-battery  light  attached  to  a  curtain-rod.  But  the 
distinctive  feature,  the  one  which  Carl  could  patent,  was 
the  means  by  which  a  bed  was  made  up  inside  the  car  as 
Pullman  seats  are  turned  into  berths.  The  back  of  the 
front  seat  was  hinged,  and  dropped  back  to  horizontal. 
The  upholstery  back  of  the  back  seat  could  be  taken  out 
and  also  placed  on  the  horizontal.  With  blankets  spread 
on  the  level  space  thus  provided,  with  the  extra-heavy  top 
and  side  curtains  in  place,  and  the  electric  light  switched 
on,  tourists  had  a  refuge  cleaner  than  a  country  hotel 
and  safer  than  a  tent.  .  .  . 

The  first  Touricar  was  being  built.  Carl  was  circu- 
larizing a  list  of  possible  purchasers,  and  corresponding 
with  makers  of  camping  goods. 

Because  he  was  not  office-broken  he  did  not  worry  about 
the  risks  of  the  new  enterprise.  The  stupid  details  of 
affairs  had,  for  him,  a  soul — the  Adventure  of  Business. 

To  be  consulted  by  draftsmen  and  shop  foremen; 
to  feel  that  if  he  should  not  arrive  at  8.30  A.M.  to  the 
second  the  most  important  part  of  all  the  world's  business 
would  be  halted  and  stenographers  loll  in  expensive  idle- 
ness; to  have  the  chief,  old  VanZile,  politely  anxious  as 
to  how  things  were  going;  to  plan  ways  of  making  a 
million  dollars  and  not  have  the  plans  seem  fantastic — 
all  these  made  it  interesting  to  overwork,  and  hypnotized 
Carl  into  a  feeling  of  responsibility  which  was  less  spec- 
tacular than  flying  before  thousands,  but  more  in  accord- 
ance with  the  spirit  of  the  time  and  place, 

227 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Inside  the  office — busy  and  reaching  for  success.  Out- 
side the  office — frankly  bored. 

Carl  was  a  dethroned  prince.  He  had  been  accustomed 
to  a  more  than  royal  court  of  admirers.  Now  he  was  a 
nobody  the  moment  he  went  twenty  feet  from  his  desk. 
He  was  forgotten.  He  did  not  seek  out  the  many  people 
he  had  met  when  he  was  an  aviator  and  a  somebody.  He 
believed,  perhaps  foolishly,  that  they  liked  him  only  as 
a  personage,  not  as  a  person.  He  sat  lonely  at  dinner, 
in  cheap  restaurants  with  stains  on  the  table-cloths,  for 
he  had  put  much  of  his  capital  into  the  new  Touricar 
Company,  mothered  by  the  VanZiie  Corporation;  and 
aeroplanes,  accessories,  traveling-expenses,  and  the  like 
had  devoured  much  of  his  large  earnings  at  aviation  be- 
fore he  had  left  the  game. 

In  his  large,  shabby,  fairly  expensive  furnished  room 
on  Seventy-fifth  Street  he  spent  unwilling  evenings, 
working  on  Touricar  plans,  or  reading  French — French 
technical  motor  literature,  light  novels,  Balzac,  anything. 

He  tried  to  keep  in  physical  form,  and,  much  though 
the  routine  and  silly  gestures  of  gymnasium  exercises 
bored  him,  he  took  them  three  times  a  week.  He  could 
not  explain  the  reason,  but  he  kept  his  identity  concealed 
at  the  gymnasium,  giving  his  name  as  "O.  Ericson." 

Even  at  the  Aero  Club,  where  scores  knew  him  by 
sight,  he  was  a  nobody.  Aviation,  like  all  pioneer  arts, 
must  look  to  the  men  who  are  doing  new  things  or  plan- 
ning new  things,  not  to  heroes  past.  Carl  was  often  alone 
at  lunch  at  the  club.  Any  group  would  have  welcomed 
him,  but  he  did  not  seek  them  out.  For  the  first  time  he 
really  saw  the  interior  decorations  of  the  club.  In  the 
old  days  he  had  been  much  too  busy  talking  with  active 
comrades  to  gaze  about.  But  now  he  stared  for  five 
minutes  together  at  the  stamped-leather  wall-covering 
of  the  dining-room.  He  noted,  much  too  carefully  for  a 
happy  man,  the  trophies  of  the  lounging-room.  But  at 
one  corner  he  never  glanced.  For  here  was  a  framed 

228 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

picture  of  the  forgotten  Hawk  Ericson,  landing  on  Gov- 
ernor's Island,  winner  of  the  flight  from  Chicago  to  New 
York.  .  .  .  Such  a  beautiful  swoop!  .  .  . 

There  is  no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  he  disliked  the  suc- 
cessful new  aviators,  and  did  so  because  he  was  jealous 
of  them.  He  admitted  the  fact,  but  he  could  not  put  into 
his  desire  to  be  a  good  boy  one-quarter  of  the  force  that 
inspired  his  resentment  at  being  a  lonely  man  and  a 
nobody.  But,  since  he  knew  he  was  envious,  he  was 
careful  not  to  show  it,  not  to  inflict  it  upon  others.  He 
was  gracious  and  added  a  wrinkle  between  his  brows,  and 
said  "Gosh!"  and  "ain't"  much  less  often. 

He  had  few  friends  these  days.  Death  had  taken 
many;  and  he  was  wary  of  lion-hunters,  who  in  dull 
seasons  condescend  to  ex-lions  and  dethroned  princes. 
But  he  was  fond  of  a  couple  of  Aero  Club  men,  an  auto- 
mobile ex-racer  who  was  a  selling-agent  for  the  VanZile 
Corporation,  and  Charley  Forbes,  the  bright-eyed,  curly- 
headed,  busy,  dissipated  little  reporter  who  had  followed 
him  from  Chicago  to  New  York  for  the  Chronicle.  Oc- 
casionally one  of  the  men  with  whom  he  had  flown — 
Hank  Odell  or  Walter  MacMonnies  or  Lieutenant  Rut- 
ledge  of  the  navy — came  to  town,  and  Carl  felt  natural 
again.  As  for  women,  the  only  girl  whom  he  had  known 
well  in  years,  Istra  Nash,  the  painter,  had  gone  to  Cali- 
fornia to  keep  house  for  her  father  till  she  should  have 
an  excuse  to  escape  to  New  York  or  Europe  again. 

Inside  the  office — a  hustling,  optimistic  young  busi- 
ness man.  For  the  rest  of  the  time — a  dethroned  prince. 
Such  was  Carl  Ericson  in  November,  1912,  when  a  letter 
from  Gertrude  Cowles,  which  had  pursued  him  all  over 
America  and  Europe,  finally  caught  him: 

West  1 57th  St. 

NEW  YORK. 

CARL  DEAR, — Oh  such  excitement,  we  have  come  to  New  York 
to  live!  Ray  has  such  a  good  position  with  a  big  NY  real  estate 

229 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

co.  &  Mama  &  I  are  going  to  make  a  home  for  him  even  if  it's 
only  just  a  flat  (but  it's  quite  a  big  one  &  looks  out  on  the  duckiest 
old  house  that  must  have  been  adorning  Harlem  for  heaven 
knows  how  long,  &  our  house  has  all  modern  conveniences, 
elevator  &  all. 

Think,  Carl,  I'm  going  to  study  dancing  at  Madame  Vash- 
kowska's  school — she  was  with  the  Russian  ballet  &  really  is 
almost  as  wonderful  a  dancer  as  Isadora  Duncan  or  Pavlova. 
Perhaps  I'll  teach  all  these  ducky  new  dances  to  children  some 
day.  I'm  just  terribly  excited  to  be  here,  like  the  silliest  gushiest 
little  girl  in  the  world.  And  I  do  hope  so  much  you  will  be  able 
to  come  to  NY  &  honor  us  with  your  presence  at  dinner,  famous 
aviator — our  Carl  &  we  are  so  proud  of  you — if  you  will  still 
remember  simple  people  like  us  do  come  any  time.  Wonder 
where  you  will  be  when  this  reaches  you. 

I  read  in  the  papers  that  your  accident  isn't  serious  but  I 
am  worried,  oh  Carl  you  must  take  care  of  yourself. 

Yours  as  ever, 

GERTIE. 

P.S.  Mama  sends  her  best  regards,  so  does  Ray,  he  has  a  black 
mustache  now,  we  tease  him  about  it  dreadfully. 

G. 

One  minute  after  reading  the  letter,  in  his  room,  Carl 
was  standing  on  the  chaste  black-and-white  tiles  of  the 
highly  respectable  white-arched  hall  down-stairs  asking 

Information  for  the  telephone  number  of  West 

1 57th  Street,  while  his  landlord,  a  dry-bearded  goat  of  a 
physician  who  had  failed  in  the  practise  of  medicine  and 
was  now  failing  in  the  practise  of  rooming-houses,  listened 
from  the  front  of  the  hall. 

Glad  to  escape  from  the  funereally  genteel  house,  Carl 
hastily  changed  his  collar  and  tie  and,  like  the  little  boy 
Carl  whom  Gertie  had  known,  dog-trotted  to  the  sub- 
way, which  was  going  to  take  him  Home. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

BEFORE  the  twelve-story  Bendingo  Apartments,  Carl 
scanned  the  rows  of  windows  which  pierced  the  wall 
like  bank-swallows'  nests  in  a  bold  cliff.  .  .  .  One  group  of 
those  windows  was  home — Joralemon  and  memories, 
Gertie's  faith  and  understanding.  ...  It  was  she  who  had 
always  understood  him.  ...  In  anticipation  he  loitered 
through  the  big,  marble-and-stucco,  rug  and  rubber-tree, 
negro  hallboy  and  Jew  tenant  hallway.  .  .  .  What  would 
the  Cowleses  be  like,  now? 

Gertie  met  him  in  the  coat-smelling  private  hall  of  the 
Cowles  apartment,  greeted  him  with  both  hands  clasping 
his,  and  her  voice  catching  in,  "Oh,  Carl,  it's  so  good  to 
see  you!"  Behind  Gertie  was  a  swishing,  stiff-backed 
Mrs.  Cowles,  piping  in  a  high,  worn  voice:  "Mr.  Ericson! 
A  friend  from  home!  And  such  a  famous  friend!" 

Gertie  drew  him  into  the  living-room.    He  looked  at  her. 

He  found,  not  a  girl,  but  a  woman  of  thirty,  plump, 
solid,  with  the  tiniest  wrinkles  of  past  unhappiness  or 
ennui  at  the  corners  of  her  mouth;  but  her  eyes  radiant 
with  sweetness,  and  her  hair  appealingly  soft  and  brown 
above  her  wide,  calm  forehead.  She  was  gowned  in 
lavender  crepe  de  Chine,  with  panniers  of  satin  elaborately 
sprinkled  with  little  bunches  of  futurist  flowers;  long  jet 
earrings;  a  low-cut  neck  that  hinted  of  a  comfortable 
bosom.  Eyes  shining,  hands  firm  on  his  arm,  voice  ring- 
ing, she  was  unaffectedly  glad  to  see  him — her  childhood 
playmate,  whom  she  had  not  beheld  for  seven  years. 

Mrs.  Cowles  was  waiting  for  them  to  finish  their  greet- 
ings. Carl  was  startled  to  find  Mrs.  Cowles  smaller  than 

231 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

he  had  remembered,  her  hair  nearly  white  and  not  perfectly 
matched,  her  face  crisscrossed  with  wrinkles  deeper  than 
her  age  justified.  But  her  old  disapproval  of  Carl,  son 
of  a  carpenter  and  cousin  of  a  "  hired  girl,"  was  gone. 
She  even  laughed  mildly,  like  a  kitten  sneezing.  And  from 
a  room  somewhere  beyond  Ray  shouted: 

"  Be  right  there  in  a  second,  old  man.  Crazy  to  have  a 
look  at  you." 

Carl  did  not  really  see  the  living-room,  their  back- 
ground. Indeed,  he  never  really  saw  it.  There  was 
nothing  to  see — chairs  and  a  table  and  pictures  of  meadows 
and  roses.  It  was  comfortable,  however,  and  had  con- 
veniences— a  folding  card-table,  a  cribbage-board,  score- 
pads  for  whist  and  five  hundred;  a  humidor  of  cigars;  a 
large  Morris  chair  and  an  ugly  but  well-padded  couch  of 
green  tufted  velvetine. 

They  sat  about  in  chairs,  talking. 

Ray  came  in,  slapped  Carl  on  the  back,  roared:  "Well, 
here's  the  stranger!  Holy  Mike!  have  you  got  a  mus- 
tache, too?  Better  shave  it  off  before  Gert  starts  kidding 
you  about  it.  Have  a  cigar?" 

Carl  felt  at  home  for  the  first  time  in  a  year;  for  the 
first  time  talked  easily. 

"Say,  Gertie,  tell  me  about  my  folks,  and  Bone  Still- 
man." 

"Why,  I  saw  your  father  just  before  we  left,  Carl. 
You  know  he  still  does  quite  a  little  business.  We  got 
your  mother  to  join  the  Nautilus  Club — she  doesn't  go 
very  often;  but  she  had  a  nice  paper  about  'Java  and 
Its  Products,'  and  she  helps  us  a  lot  with  the  rest-room. 
I  haven't  seen  Mr.  Stillman  for  a  long,  long  time.  Ray, 
what  has— 

Ray:  "Why,  I  think  old  Bone 's  off  on  some  expedition 
'r  other.  Fellow  told  me  Bone  was  some  kind  of  a  forest 
ranger  or  mine  inspector,  or  some  darn  thing,  up  in  the 
Big  Woods.  He  must  be  pretty  well  along  toward  seventy 
now,  at  that." 

232 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Carl:  "So  dad's  getting  along  well.  His  letters  aren't 
very  committal.  .  .  .  Oh,  say,  Gertie,  what  ever  became 
of  Ben  Rusk?  I've  lost  track  of  him  entirely." 

Gertie:  "Why,  didn't  you  know?  He  went  to  Rush 
Medical  College.  They  say  he  did  splendidly  there;  he 
stood  awfully  well  in  his  classes,  and  now  he's  in  practise 
with  his  father,  home." 

Carl:  "Rush?" 

Gertie:    "Yes,  you  know,  in  Chi " 

Carl:  "Oh  yes,  sure;  in  Chicago;  sure,  I  remember 
now;  I  saw  it  when  I  was  there  one  time.  Why!  That's 
the  school  his  father  went  to,  wasn't  it?" 

Ray:   "Yes,  sure,  that's  the  one." 

The  point  seemed  settled. 

Carl:  "Well,  well,  so  Ben  did  study  medicine,  after 

Oh,  say,  how's  Adelaide  Benner?" 

Gertie:  "Why,  you'll  see  her!  She's  coming  to  New 
York  in  just  a  couple  of  weeks  to  stay  with  us  till  she  gets 
settled.  Just  think,  she's  to  have  a  whole  year  here, 
studying  domestic  science,  and  then  she's  to  have  a  per- 
fectly dandy  position  teaching  in  the  Fargo  High  School. 
I'm  not  supposed  to  tell — you  mustn't  breathe  a  word  of 
it " 

Mrs.  Cowles  (interrupting):  "Adelaide  is  a  good  girl. 
.  .  .  Ray!  Don't  tilt  your  chair!" 

Gertie:  "Yes,  isn't  she,  mamma.  .  .  .  Well,  I  was  just 
saying:  between  you  and  me,  Carl,  she  is  to  have  the 
position  in  Fargo  all  ready  and  waiting  for  her,  though 
of  course  they  can't  announce  it  publicly,  with  all  the 
cats  that  would  like  to  get  it,  and  all.  Isn't  that 
fine?" 

Carl:  "Certainly  is.  ...  'Member  the  time  we  had  the 
May  party  at  Adelaide's,  and  all  I  could  get  for  my 
basket  was  rag  babies  and  May  flowers?  Gee,  but  I 
felt  out  of  it!" 

Gertie:    "We  did  have  some  good  parties,  didn't  we!" 

Ray:  "Don't  call  that  much  of  a  good  party  for  Carl! 

233 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Ring  off,  Gert;  you  got  the  wrong  number  that  time,  all 
right!" 

Gertie  (flushing):  "Oh,  I  didn't  mean But  we  did 

have  some  good  times.  Oh,  Carl,  will  you  ever  forget  the 
time  you  and  I  ran  away  when  we  were  just  babies?" 

Carl:   "I'll  never  forget " 

Mrs.  Cowles:  "I'll  never  forget  that  time!  My  lands! 
I  thought  I  should  die,  I  was  so  frightened." 

Carl:  "You've  forgiven  me  now,  though,  haven't 
you?" 

Mrs.  Cowles:  "My  dear  boy,  of  course  I  have!"  (She 
wiped  away  a  few  tears  with  a  gentlewoman  handkerchief 
of  lace  and  thin  linen.  Carl  crossed  the  room  and  kissed 
her  pale-veined,  silvery  old  hand.  Abashed,  he  subsided 
on  the  couch,  and,  trying  to  look  as  though  he  hadn't 
done  it ) 

Carl:  "Ohhhhh  say,  whatever  did  become  of 

Oh,  I  can't  think  of  his  name Oh,  you  know I 

know  his  name  well  as  I  do  my  own,  but  it's  slipped  me, 
just  for  the  moment You  know,  he  ran  the  billiard- 
parlor;  the  son  of  the " 

(From  Mrs.  Cowles,  a  small,  disapproving  sound;  from 
Ray,  a  grin  of  knowing  naughtiness  and  a  violent  head- 
shake.) 

Gertie  (gently):  "Yes.  .  .  .  He — has  left  Joralemon. 
.  .  .  Klemm,  you  mean." 

Carl  (hastily,  wondering  what  Eddie  Klemm  had  done) : 
"Oh,  I  see.  .  .  .  Have  there  been  many  changes  in  Jorale- 
mon?" 

Mrs.  Cowles:  "Do  you  write  to  your  father  and 
mother,  Carl?  You  ought  to." 

Carl:  "Oh  yes,  I  write  to  them  quite  often,  now,  though 
for  a  time  I  didn't." 

Mrs.  Cowles:  "I'm  glad,  my  boy.  It's  pretty  good, 
after  all,  to  have  home  folks  that  you  can  depend  on, 
isn't  it?  When  I  first  went  to  Joralemon,  I  thought  it 
was  a  little  pokey,  but  now  I'm  older,  and  I've  been  there 

234 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

so  long  and  all,  that  I'm  almost  afraid  of  New  York,  and 
I  declare  I  do  get  real  lonely  for  home  sometimes.  I'd  be 
glad  to  see  Dr.  Rusk — Ben's  father,  I  mean,  the  old  doctor 
— driving  by,  though  of  course  you  know  I  lived  in  Min- 
neapolis a  great  many  years,  and  I  do  feel  I  ought  to  take 
advantage  of  the  opportunities  here,  and  I've  thought  quite 
seriously  about  taking  up  French  again,  it's  so  long  since 

I've  studied  it You  ought  to  study  it;  you  will  find 

it  cultivates  the  mind.  And  you  must  be  sure  to  write 
often  to  your  mother;  there's  nothing  you  can  depend 
on  like  a  mother's  love,  my  boy." 

Ray:  "Say,  look  here,  Carl,  I  want  to  hear  something 
about  all  this  aviation.  How  does  it  feel  to  fly,  anyway? 
I'd  be  scared  to  death;  it's  funny,  I  can't  look  off  the  top 
of  a  sky-scraper  without  feeling  as  though  I  wanted  to 
jump.  Gosh!  I " 

Gertie:  "Now  you  just  let  Carl  tell  us  when  he  gets 
ready,  you  big,  bad  brother!  Carl  wants  to  hear  all  about 
Home  first.  .  .  .  All  these  years! .  . .  You  were  asking  about 
the  changes.  There  haven't  been  so  very  many.  You 
know  it's  a  little  slow  there.  Oh,  of  course,  I  almost  for- 
got; why,  you  haven't  been  in  Joralemon  since  they  built 
up  what  used  to  be  Tubbs's  pasture." 

Carl:  "Not  the  old  pasture  by  the  lake?  Well,  well! 
Is  that  a  fact!  Why,  gee!  I  used  to  snare  gophers  there!" 

Gertie:  "Oh  yes.  Why,  you  simply  wouldn't  know  it, 
Carl,  it's  so  much  changed.  There  must  be  a  dozen  houses 
on  it,  now.  Why,  there's  cement  walks  and  everything, 
and  Mr.  Upham  has  a  house  there,  a  real  nice  one,  with  a 
screened-in  porch  and  everything.  ...  Of  course  you  know 
they've  put  in  the  sewer  now,  and  there's  lots  of  modern 
bath-rooms,  and  almost  everybody  has  a  Ford.  We 
would  have  bought  one,  but  planning  to  come  away  so 

soon Oh  yes,  and  they've  added  a  fire-escape  to  the 

school-house." 

Carl:  "Well,  well!  ...  Oh,  say,  Ray,  how  is  Howard 
Griffin  getting  along?" 

16  235 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Ray:  "Why,  Howard's  graduated  from  Chicago  Law 
School,  and  he's  practising  in  Denver.  Doing  pretty  well, 
I  guess;  settled  down  and  got  quite  some  real-estate 
holdings.  .  .  .  Have  'nother  cigar,  old  man?  .  .  .  Say, 
speaking  of  Plato,  of  course  you  know  they  ousted  old 
S.  Alcott  Woodski  from  the  presidency,  for  heresy,  some- 
thing about  baptism;  and  the  dean  succeeded  him.  .  .  . 
Poor  old  cuss,  he  wasn't  as  mean  as  the  dean,  anyway. 
.  .  .  Say,  Carl,  I've  always  thought  they  gave  you  a  pretty 
raw  deal  there " 

Gertie  (interrupting):  "Perfectly  dreadful!  .  .  .  Ray, 
dont  put  your  feet  on  that  couch;  I  brushed  it  thoroughly, 
just  this  morning.  ...  It  was  simply  terrible,  Carl;  I've 
always  said  that  if  Plato  couldn't  appreciate  her  greatest 
son " 

Mrs.  Cowles  (sleepily):  "Outrageous.  .  .  .  And  don't 
put  your  feet  on  that  chair,  Ray." 

Ray:  "Oh,  leave  my  feet  alone!  .  .  .  Everybody  knew 
you  were  dead  right  in  standing  up  for  Prof  Frazer.  You 
remember  how  I  roasted  all  the  fellows  in  Omega  Chi 
when  they  said  you  were  nutty  to  boost  him?  And  when 
you  stood  up  in  Chapel Lord!  that  was  nervy." 

Gertie:  "Indeed  you  were  right,  and  now  you've  got 
so  famous  I  guess " 

Carl:    "Oh,  I  ain't  so " 

Mrs.  Cowles:  "I  was  simply  amazed.  .  .  .  Children,  if 
you  don't  mind,  I'm  afraid  I  must  leave  you.  Mr.  Eric- 
son,  I'm  so  ashamed  to  be  sleepy  so  early.  When  we 
lived  in  Minneapolis,  before  Mr.  Cowles  passed  beyond, 
he  was  a  regular  night-hawk,  and  we  used  to  sit — sit — 
(a  yawn) — "sit  up  till  all  hours.  But  to-night — 

Gertie:  "Oh,  must  you  go  so  soon?  I  was  just  going 
to  make  Carl  a  rarebit.  Carl  has  never  seen  one  of  my 
rarebits." 

Mrs.  Cowles:  "Make  him  one  by  all  means,  my  dear, 
and  you  young  people  sit  up  and  enjoy  yourselves  just 
as  long  as  you  like.  Good  night,  all.  .  .  .  Ray,  will  you 

236 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

please  be  sure  and  see  that  that  window  is  fastened  before 

you  go  to  bed  ?  I  get  so  nervous  when Mr.  Ericson, 

I'm  very  proud  to  think  that  one  of  our  Joralemon  boys 
should  have  done  so  well.  Sometimes  I  wonder  if  the 
Lord  ever  meant  men  to  fly — what  with  so  many  acci- 
dents, and  you  know  aviators  often  do  get  killed  and  all. 

I  was  reading  the  other  day — such  a  large  percentage 

But  we  have  been  so  proud  that  you  should  lead  them  all, 
I  was  saying  to  a  lady  on  the  train  that  we  had  a  friend 
who  was  a  famous  aviator,  and  she  was  so  interested  to 
find  that  we  knew  you.  Good  night." 

They  had  the  Welsh  rarebit,  with  beer,  and  Carl  helped 
to  make  it.  Gertie  summoned  him  into  the  scoured  kit- 
chen, saying,  with  a  beautiful  casualness,  as  she  tied  an 
apron  about  him: 

"We  can't  afford  a  hired  girl  (I  suppose  I  should  say  a 
'maid'),  because  mamma  has  put  so  much  of  our  money 
into  Ray's  business,  so  you  mustn't  expect  anything  so 
very  grand.  But  you'd  like  to  help,  wouldn't  you? 
You're  to  chop  the  cheese.  Cut  it  into  weenty  cubes." 

Carl  did  like  to  help.  He  boasted  that  he  was  the 
"  champion  cheese-chopper  of  Harlem  and  the  Bronx, 
one-thirty-three  ringside,"  while  Gertie  was  toasting 
crackers,  and  Ray  was  out  buying  bottles  of  beer  in  a 
newspaper.  It  all  made  Carl  feel  more  than  ever  at 
home.  ...  It  was  good  to  be  with  people  of  such  divine 
understanding  that  they  knew  what  he  meant  when  he 
said,  "I  suppose  there  have  been  worse  teachers  than 
Prof  Larsen 1" 

When  the  rabbit  lay  pale  in  death,  a  saddening  debacle 
of  hardened  cheese,  and  they  sat  with  their  elbows  on 
the  Modified  Mission  dining-table,  Gertie  exclaimed: 

"Oh,  Ray,  you  must  do  that  new  stunt  of  yours  for  Carl. 
It's  screamingly  funny,  Carl." 

Ray  rose,  had  his  collar  and  tie  off  in  two  jocund  jerks, 
buttoned  his  collar  on  backward,  cheerily  turned  his 
waistcoat  back  side  foremost,  lengthened  his  face  to  an 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

expression  of  unctuous  sanctimoniousness,  and  turned 
about — transformed  in  one  minute  to  a  fair  imitation  of 
a  stage  curate.  With  his  hands  folded,  Ray  droned, 
"Naow,  sistern,  it  behooveth  us  heuh  in  St.  Timothee's 
Chutch,"  while  Carl  pounded  the  table  in  his  delight  at 
seeing  old  Ray,  the  broad-shouldered,  the  lady-killer,  the 
capable  business  man,  drop  his  eyes  and  yearn. 

"Now  you  must  do  a  stunt!"  shrieked  Ray  and  Gertie; 
and  Carl  hesitatingly  sang  what  he  remembered  of  Forrest 
Haviland's  foolish  song: 

"I  went  up  in  a  balloon  so  big 
The  people  on  the  earth  they  looked  like  a  pig, 
Like  a  mice,  like  a  katydid,  like  flieses  and  like  fleasen." 

Then,  without  solicitation,  Gertie  decided  to  dance 
"Gather  the  Golden  Sheaves,"  which  she  had  learned  at 
the  school  of  Mme.  Vashkowska,  late  (though  not  very 
late)  of  the  Russian  ballet. 

She  explained  her  work;  outlined  the  theory  of  sensu- 
ous and  esthetic  dancing;  mentioned  the  backgrounds 
of  Bakst  and  the  glories  of  Nijinsky;  told  her  ambition 
to  teach  the  New  Dancing  to  children.  Carl  listened  with 
awe;  and  with  awe  did  he  gaze  as  Gertie  gathered  the 
Golden  Sheaves — purely  hypothetical  sheaves  in  a  field 
occupying  most  of  the  living-room. 

After  the  stunts  Ray  delicately  vanished.  It  was  not 
so  much  that  he  statedly  went  off  to  bed  as  that,  presently, 
he  was  not  there.  Gertie  and  Carl  were  snugly  alone,  and 
at  last  he  talked — of  Forrest  Haviland  and  Tony  Bean, 
of  flying  and  falling,  of  excited  crowds  and  the  fog-filled 
air-lanes. 

In  turn  she  told  of  her  ambition  to  do  something  mod- 
ern and  urban.  She  had  hesitated  between  dancing  and 
making  exotic  jewelry;  she  was  glad  she  had  chosen  the 
former;  it  was  so  human;  it  put  one  in  touch  with  People. 
.  .  .  She  had  recently  gone  to  dinner  with  real  Bohemians, 

238 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

spirits  of  fire,  splendidly  in  contrast  with  the  dull  plod- 
ders of  Joralemon.  The  dinner  had  been  at  a  marvelous 
place  on  West  Tenth  Street — very  foreign,  every  one 
drinking  wine  and  eating  spaghetti  and  little  red  herrings, 
and  the  women  fearlessly  smoking  cigarettes — some  of 
them.  She  had  gone  with  a  girl  from  Mme.  Vashkowska's 
school,  a  glorious  creature  from  London,  Nebraska,  who 
lived  with  the  most  fascinating  girls  at  the  Three  Arts 
Club.  They  had  met  an  artist  with  black  hair  and  lan- 
guishing eyes,  who  had  a  Yankee  name,  but  sang  Italian 
songs  divinely,  upon  the  slightest  pretext,  so  bubbling 
was  he  with  joie  de  vivre. 

Carl  was  alarmed.  "Gosh!"  he  protested,  "I  hope 
you  aren't  going  to  have  much  to  do  with  the  long-haired 
bunch.  .  .  .  I've  invented  a  name  for  them — 'the  Hobo- 
hemians.'" 

"Oh  no-o!  I  don't  take  them  seriously  at  all.  I  was 
just  glad  to  go  once." 

"Of  course  some  of  them  are  clever." 

"Oh  yes,  aren't  they  clever!" 

"But  I  don't  think  they  last  very  well." 

"Oh  no,  I'm  sure  they  don't  last  well.  Oh  no,  Carl, 
I'm  too  old  and  fat  to  be  a  Bohemian — a  Hobohemian,  I 
mean,  so " 

"Nonsense!  You  look  so — oh,  thunder!  I  don't  know 
just  how  to  express  it — well,  so  real!  It's  wonderfully 
comfortable  to  be  with  you-all  again.  I  don't  mean  you're 
just  the  'so  good  to  her  mother'  sort,  you  understand. 
But  I  mean  you're  dependable  as  well  as  artistic." 

"Oh,  indeed,  I  won't  take  them  too  seriously.  Besides, 
I  suppose  lots  of  the  people  that  go  to  Bohemian  restau- 
rants aren't  really  artists  at  all;  they  just  go  to  see 

the    artists;   they're   just   as    bromidic    as    can    be 

Don't  you  hate  bromides?     Of   course  I   want  to  see 

some  of  that  part  of  life,  but  I  think Oh,  don't 

you  think  those  artists  and  all  are  dreadfully  careless 
about  morals?" 

239 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Well " 

"Yes,"  she  breathed,  reflectively.  "No,  I  keep  up 
with  my  church  and  all — indeed  I  do.  Oh,  Carl,  you  must 
come  to  our  church — St.  Orgul's.  It's  too  sweet  for  any- 
thing. It's  just  two  blocks  from  here;  and  it  isn't  so  far 
up  here,  you  know,  not  with  the  subway — not  like  com- 
muting. It  has  the  loveliest  chapel.  And  the  most  won- 
derful reredos.  And  the  services  are  so  inspiring  and 
high-church;  not  like  that  horrid  St.  Timothy's  at  home. 
I  do  think  a  church  service  ought  to  be  beautiful.  Don't 
you  ?  It  isn't  as  though  we  were  like  a  lot  of  poor  people 
who  have  to  have  their  souls  saved  in  a  mission.  .  .  . 
What  church  do  you  attend?  You  will  come  to  St. 
Orgul's  some  time,  won't  you?" 

"Be  glad  to—  Oh,  say,  Gertie,  before  I  forget  it, 
what  is  Semina  doing  now?  Is  she  married?'1 

Apropos  of  this  subject,  Gertie  let  it  be  known  that 
she  herself  was  not  betrothed. 

Carl  had  not  considered  that  question;  but  when  he 
was  back  in  his  room  he  was  glad  to  know  that  Gertie 
was  free. 

At  the  Omega  Chi  Delta  Club,  Carl  lunched  with  Ray 
Cowles.  Two  nights  later,  Ray  and  Gertie  took  Carl  and 
Gertie's  friend,  the  glorious  creature  from  London, 
Nebraska,  to  the  opera.  Carl  did  not  know  much  about 
opera.  In  other  words,  being  a  normal  young  American 
who  had  been  water-proofed  with  college  culture,  he  knew 
absolutely  nothing  about  it.  But  he  gratefully  listened 
to  Gertie's  clear  explanation  of  why  Mme.  Vashkowska 
preferred  Wagner  to  Verdi. 

He  had,  in  the  mean  time,  received  a  formal  invitation 
for  a  party  to  occur  at  Gertie's  the  coming  Friday  evening. 

Thursday  evening  Gertie  coached  him  in  a  new  dance, 
the  turkey  trot.  She  also  gave  him  a  lesson  in  the 
Boston,  with  a  new  dip  invented  by  Mme.  Vashkowska, 
which  was  certain  to  sweep  the  country,  because,  of  course, 

240 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Vashkowska  was  the  only  genuinely  qualified  maitresse 
de  danse  in  America. 

It  was  a  beautiful  evening.  Home!  Ray  came  in, 
and  the  three  of  them  had  coffee  and  thin  sandwiches. 
At  Gertie's  suggestion,  Ray  again  turned  his  collar  round 
and  performed  his  "clergyman  stunt."  While  the  im- 
personation did  not,  perhaps,  seem  so  humorous  as  before, 
Carl  was  amused;  and  he  consented  to  sing  the  "I  went 
up  in  a  balloon  so  big"  song,  so  that  Ray  might  learn  it 
and  sing  it  at  the  office. 

It  was  captivating  to  have  Gertie  say,  quietly,  as  he 
left:  "I  hope  you'll  be  able  to  come  to  the  party  a  little 
early  to-morrow,  Carl.  You  know  we  count  on  you  to 
help  us." 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  party  was  on  at  the  Cowles  flat. 
People  came.  They  all  set  to  it,  having  a  party, 
being  lively  and  gay,  whether  they  wanted  to  or  not. 
They  all  talked  at  once,  and  had  delicious  shocks  over 
the  girl  from  London,  Nebraska,  who,  having  moved  to 
Washington  Place,  just  a  block  or  two  from  ever  so  many 
artists,  was  now  smoking  a  cigarette  and,  wearing  a  gown 
that  was  black  and  clinging.  It  was  no  news  to  her  that 
men  had  a  tendency  to  become  interested  in  her  ankles. 
But  she  still  went  to  church  and  was  accepted  by  quite 
the  nicest  of  the  St.  OrguPs  set,  to  whom  Gertie  had 
introduced  her. 

She  and  Gertie  were  the  only  thoroughly  qualified  rep- 
resentatives of  Art,  but  Beauty  and  Gallantry  and  Wit 
were  common.  The  conspirators  in  holding  a  party  were, 
on  the  male  side: 

An  insurance  adjuster,  who  was  a  frat-brother  to  Carl 
and  Ray,  though  he  came  from  Melanchthon  College.  A 
young  lawyer,  ever  so  jolly,  with  a  banjo.  A  bantling 
clergyman,  who  was  spoken  of  with  masculine  approval 
because  he  smoked  a  pipe  and  said  charmingly  naughty 
things.  Johnson  of  the  Homes  and  Long  Island  Real 
Estate  Company,  and  his  brother,  of  the  Martinhurst 
Development  Company.  Four  older  men,  ranging  from 
thin-haired  to  very  bald,  who  had  come  with  their  wives 
and  secretly  looked  at  their  watches  while  they  talked 
brightly  with  one  another's  wives.  Five  young  men 
whom  Carl  could  not  tell  apart,  as  they  all  had  smooth 
hair  and  eye-glasses  and  smart  dress-shirts  and  obliging 

242 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

smiles  and  complimentary  references  to  his  aviating. 
He  gave  up  trying  to  remember  which  was  which. 

It  was  equally  hard  to  remember  which  of  the  women 
Gertie  knew  as  a  result  of  her  girlhood  visit  to  New  York, 
which  from  their  membership  in  St.  Orgul's  Church,  which 
from  their  relation  to  Minnesota.  They  all  sat  in  rows 
on  couches  and  chairs  and  called  him  "You  wicked  man!" 
for  reasons  none  too  clear  to  him.  He  finally  fled  from 
them  and  joined  the  group  of  young  men,  who  showed 
an  ill-bred  and  disapproved  tendency  to  sneak  off  into 
Ray's  room  for  a  smoke.  He  did  not,  however,  escape 
one  young  woman  who  stood  out  from  the  melee — a 
young  woman  with  a  personality  almost  as  remarkable 
as  that  of  the  glorious  creature  from  London,  Nebraska. 
This  was  the  more  or  less  married  young  woman  named 
Dorothy,  and  affectionately  called  "Tottykins"  by  all 
the  St.  Orgul's  group.  She  was  of  the  kind  who  look  at 
men  appraisingly,  and  expect  them  to  come  up,  be  un- 
duly familiar,  and  be  crushed.  She  had  seven  distinct 
methods  of  getting  men  to  say  indiscreet  things,  and 
three  variations  of  reply,  of  which  the  favorite  was  to  re- 
-mark with  well-bred  calmness:  "I'm  afraid  you  have 

made  a  slight  error,  Mr.  Uh I  didn't  quite  catch 

your  name?  Perhaps  they  failed  to  tell  you  that  I  at- 
tend St.  Orgul's  evvvv'ry  Sunday,  and  have  a  husband 
and  child,  and  am  not  at  all,  really,  you  know.  I  hope 
that  there  has  been  nothing  I  said  that  has  given  you  the 
idea  that  I  have  been  looking  for  a  flirtation." 

A  thin,  small  female  with  bobbed  hair  was  Tottykins, 
who  kept  her  large  husband  and  her  fat,  white  grub  of  an 
infant  somewhere  in  the  back  blocks.  She  fingered  a 
long,  gold,  religious  chain  with  her  square,  stubby  hand, 
while  she  gazed  into  men's  eyes  with  what  she  privately 
termed  "daring  frankness." 

Tottykins  the  fair;  Tottykins  the  modern;  Tottykins 
who  had  read  Three  Weeks  and  nearly  all  of  a  wicked 
novel  in  French,  and  wore  a  large  gold  cross;  Tottykins 

243 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

who  worked  so  hard  in  her  little  flat  that  she  had  to  rest 
all  of  every  afternoon  and  morning;  Tottykins  the  ad- 
vanced and  liberal — yet  without  any  of  the  extremes  of 
socialists  and  artists  and  vegetarians  and  other  ill-con- 
ditioned persons  who  do  not  attend  St.  Orgul's;  Totty- 
kins the  firmly  domestic,  whose  husband  grew  more  wor- 
ried every  year;  Tottykins  the  intensely  cultured  and 
inquisitive  about  life,  the  primitively  free  and  pervasively 
original,  who  announced  in  public  places  that  she  wanted 
always  to  live  like  the  spirit  of  the  Dancing  Bacchante 
statue,  but  had  the  assistant  rector  of  St.  Orgul's  in  for 
coffee,  every  fourth  Monday  evening. 

Tottykins  beckoned  Carl  to  a  corner  and  said,  with 
her  manner  of  amused  condescension,  "Now  you  sit  right 
down  here,  Hawk  Ericson,  and  tell  me  all  about  aviation." 

Carl  was  not  vastly  sensitive.  He  had  not  disliked  the 
nice  young  men  with  eye-glasses.  Not  till  now  did  he 
realize  how  Tottykins's  shrill  references  to  the  Dancing 
Bacchante  and  the  Bacchanting  of  her  mud -colored 
Dutch-fashioned  hair  had  bored  him.  Ennui  was  not,  of 
course,  an  excuse;  but  it  was  the  explanation  of  why  he 
answered  in  this  wise  (very  sweetly,  looking  Tottykins 
in  the  eyes  and  patting  her  hand  with  a  brother-like  and 
altogether  maddening  condescension): 

"No,  no,  that  isn't  the  way,  Dorothy.  It's  quite  passe 
to  ask  me  to  tell  you  all  about  aviation.  That  isn't  done, 
not  in  1912.  Oh  Dor-o-thy!  Oh  no,  no!  No-o!  No, 
no.  First  you  should  ask  me  if  I'm  afraid  when  I'm  fly- 
ing. Oh,  always  begin  that  way.  Then  you  say  that 
there's  a  curious  fact  about  you — when  you're  on  a  high 
building  and  just  look  down  once,  then  you  get  so  dizzy 

that  you  want  to  jump.  Then,  after  you've  said  that 

Let's  see.  You're  a  church  member,  aren't  you?  Well 
then,  next  you'd  say,  'Just  how  does  it  feel  to  be  up  in 
an  aeroplane?'  or  if  you  don't  say  that  then  you've  simply 
got  to  say,  'Just  how  does  it  feel  to  fly,  anyw,ay?'  But 
if  you're  just  terribly  interested,  Dorothy,  you  might  ask 

244 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

about  biplanes  versus  monoplanes,  and  'Do  I  think  there'll 
ever  be  a  flight  across  the  Atlantic?'  But  whatever  you 
do,  Dorothy,  don't  fail  to  ask  me  if  I'll  give  you  a  free 

ride  when  I  start  flying  again.  And  we'll  fly  and  fly 

Like  birds.  You  know.  Or  like  the  Dancing  Bac- 
chante. .  .  .  That's  the  way  to  talk  about  aviation.  .  .  . 
And  now  you  tell  me  all  about  babies!" 

"Really,  I'm  afraid  babies  is  rather  a  big  subject  to 
tell  all  about!  At  a  party!  Really,  you  know " 

That  was  the  only  time  Carl  was  not  bored  at  the  party. 
And  even  then  he  had  spiritual  indigestion  from  having 
been  rude. 

For  the  rest  of  the  time: 

Every  one  knew  everybody  else,  and  took  Carl  aside  to 
tell  him  that  everybody  was  "the  most  conscientious  man 
in  our  office,  Ericson;  why,  the  Boss  would  trust  him  with 
anything."  It  saddened  Carl  to  hear  the  insurance  ad- 
juster boom,  "Oh  you  Tottykins!"  across  the  room,  at 
ten-minute  intervals,  like  a  human  fog-horn  on  the  sea 
of  ennui. 

They  were  all  so  uniformly  polite,  so  neat-minded  and 
church-going  and  dull.  Nearly  all  the  girls  did  their 
hair  and  coquetries  one  exactly  like  another.  Carl  is  not 
to  be  pitied.  He  had  the  pleasure  of  martyrdom  when 
he  heard  the  younger  Johnson  tell  of  Martinhurst,  the 
Suburb  Beautiful.  He  believed  that  he  had  reached  the 
nadir  of  boredom.  But  he  was  mistaken. 

After  simple  and  pleasing  refreshments  of  the  wooden- 
plate  and  paper-napkin  school,  Gertie  announced:  "Now 
we're  going  to  have  some  stunts,  and  you're  each  to  give 
one.  I  know  you  all  can,  and  if  anybody  tries  to  beg  off — 

my,  what  will  happen !  My  brother  has  a  new 

one " 

For  the  third  time  that  month,  Carl  saw  Ray  turn  his 
collar  round  and  become  clerical,  while  every  one  rustled 
with  delight,  including  the  jolly  bantling  clergyman. 

And  for  the  fourth  time  he  saw  Gertie  dance  "Gather 

245 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

the  Golden  Sheaves."  She  appeared,  shy  and  serious,  in 
bloomers  and  flat  dancing-shoes,  which  made  her  ample 
calves  bulge  the  more;  she  started  at  sight  of  the  harvest 
moon  (and  well  she  may  have  been  astonished,  if  she  did, 
indeed,  see  a  harvest  moon  there,  above  the  gilded  buffalo 
horns  on  the  unit  bookcase),  rose  to  her  toes,  flapped  her 
arms,  and  began  to  gather  the  sheaves  to  her  breast,  with 
enough  plump  and  panting  energy  to  enable  her  to  gather 
at  least  a  quarter-section  of  them  before  the  whistle  blew. 

It  was  not  only  esthetic,  but  Close  to  the  Soil. 

Then,  to  banjo  accompaniment,  the  insurance  ad- 
juster sighed  for  his  old  Kentucky  home,  which  Carl 
judged  to  have  been  located  in  Brooklyn.  The  whole 
crowd  joined  in  the  chorus  and 

Suddenly,  with  a  shock  that  made  him  despise  himself 
for  the  cynical  superiority  which  he  had  been  enjoying, 
Carl  remembered  that  Forrest  Haviland,  Tony  Bean, 
Hank  Odell,  even  surly  Jack  Ryan  and  the  alien  Car- 
meau,  had  sung  "My  Old  Kentucky  Home"  on  their 
last  night  at  the  Bagby  School.  He  felt  their  beloved 
presences  in  the  room.  He  had  to  fight  against  tears  as 
he  too  joined  in  the  chorus.  .  .  .  "Then  weep  no  more,  my 
lady."  ...  He  was  beside  a  California  poppy-field.  The 
blossoms  slumbered  beneath  the  moon,  and  on  his  shoul- 
der was  the  hand  of  Forrest  Haviland.  .  .  . 

He  had  repented.  He  became  part  of  the  group.  He 
spoke  kindly  to  Tottykins.  But  presently  Tottykins 
postponed  her  well-advertised  return  to  her  husband  and 
baby,  and  gave  a  ten-minute  dramatic  recital  from  Byron; 
and  the  younger  Johnson  sang  a  Swiss  mountaineer  song 
with  yodels. 

Gertie  looked  speculatively  at  Carl  twice  during  this 
offering.  He  knew  that  the  gods  were  plotting  an  abomi- 
nable thing.  She  was  going  to  call  upon  him  for  the  "stunt " 
which  had  been  inescapably  indentified  with  him,  the 
song,  "I  went  up  in  a  balloon  so  big."  He  met  the  crisis 
heroically.  He  said  loudly,  as  the  shaky  strains  of  the 

246 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Swiss  ballad  died  on  the  midnight  mountain  air  of  i£7th 
Street  (while  the  older  men  concealed  yawns  and  ap- 
plauded, and  the  family,  in  the  adjoining  flat  rapped  on 
the  radiator):  "I'm  sorry  my  throat's  so  sore  to-night. 
Otherwise  I'd  sing  a  song  I  learned  from  a  fellow  in  Cali- 
fornia— balloon  s'  big." 

Gertie  stared  at  him  doubtfully,  but  passed  to  a  kitten- 
faced  girl  from  Minnesota,  who  was  quite  ready  to  give 
an  imitation  of  a  child  whose  doll  has  been  broken.  Her 
"stunt"  was  greeted  with,  "Oh,  how  cun-ning!  Please 
do  it  again!" 

She  prepared  to  do  it  again.  Carl  made  hasty  motions 
of  departure,  pathetically  holding  his  throat. 

He  did  not  begin  to  get  restless  till  he  had  reached 
Ninety-sixth  Street  and  had  given  up  his  seat  in  the  sub- 
way to  a  woman  who  resembled  Tottykins.  He  won- 
dered if  he  had  not  been  at  the  Old  Home  long  enough. 
At  Seventy-second  Street,  on  an  inspiration  that  came 
as  the  train  was  entering  the  station,  he  changed  to  a 
local  and  went  down  to  Fifty-ninth  Street.  He  found  an 
all-night  garage,  hired  a  racing-car,  and  at  dawn  he  was 
driving  furiously  through  Long  Island,  a  hundred  miles 
from  New  York,  on  a  roadway  perilously  slippery  with 
falling  snow. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

CARL  wished  that  Adelaide  Benner  had  never  come 
from  Joralemon  to  study  domestic  science.  He  felt 
that  he  was  a  sullen  brute,  but  he  could  not  master  his 
helpless  irritation  as  he  walked  with  Adelaide  and  Gertie 
Cowles  through  Central  Park,  on  a  snowy  Sunday  after- 
noon of  December.  Adelaide  assumed  that  one  remained 
in  the  state  of  mind  called  Joralemon  all  one's  life;  that, 
however  famous  he  might  be,  the  son  of  Oscar  Ericson 
was  not  sufficiently  refined  for  Miss  Cowles  of  the  Big 
House  on  the  Hill,  though  he  might  improve  under  Cowles 
influences.  He  was  still  a  person  who  had  run  away  from 
Plato!  But  that  assumption  was  far  less  irritating  than 
one  into  which  Adelaide  threw  all  of  her  faded  yearning — 
that  Gertie  and  he  were  in  love. 

Adelaide  kept  repeating,  with  coy  slyness:  "Isn't  it 
too  bad  you  two  have  me  in  the  way!"  and:  "Don't  mind 
poor  me.  Auntie  will  turn  her  back  any  time  you  want 
her  to." 

And  Gertie  merely  blushed,  murmuring,  "Don't  be  a 
silly." 

At  Eightieth  Street  Adelaide  announced:  "Now  I  must 
leave  you  children.  I'm  going  over  to  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  of  Art.  I  do  love  to  see  art  pictures.  I've 
always  wanted  to.  Now  be  as  good  as  you  can,  you 
two." 

Gertie  was  mechanical  about  replying.  "Oh,  don't 
run  away,  Addy  dear." 

"Oh  yes,  you  two  will  miss  an  old  maid  like  me  ter- 
ribly!" And  Adelaide  was  off,  a  small,  sturdy,  undis- 

248 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

tinguished  figure,  with  an  unyielding  loyalty  to  Gertie  and 
to  the  idea  of  marriage. 

Carl  looked  at  her  bobbing  back  (with  wrinkles  in  her 
cloth  jacket  over  the  shoulders)  as  she  melted  into  the 
crowd  of  glossy  fur-trimmed  New-Yorkers.  He  com- 
prehended her  goodness,  her  devotion.  He  sighed,  "If 
she'd  only  stop  this  hinting  about  Gertie  and  me — 
He  was  repentant  of  his  irritation,  and  said  to  Gertie, 
who  was  intimately  cuddling  her  arm  into  his:  "Ade- 
laide 's  an  awfully  good  kid.  Sorry  she  had  to  go." 

Gertie  jerked  her  arm  away,  averted  her  profile,  grated: 
"If  you  miss  her  so  much,  perhaps  you'd  better  run  after 
her.  Really,  I  wouldn't  interfere,  not  for  worlds!" 

"Why,  hello,  Gertie!  What  seems  to  be  the  matter? 
Don't  I  detect  a  chill  in  the  atmosphere  ?  So  sorry  you've 
gone  and  gotten  refined  on  me.  I  was  just  going  to  sug- 
gest some  low-brow  amusement  like  tea  at  the  Casino." 

"Well,  you  ought  to  know  a  lady  doesn't " 

"Oh,  now,  Gertie  dear,  not  'lady.'" 

"I  don't  think  you're  a  bit  nice,  Carl  Ericson,  I  don't, 
to  be  making  fun  of  me  when  I'm  serious.  And  why 
haven't  you  been  up  to  see  us?  Mamma  and  Ray  have 
spoken  of  it,  and  you've  only  been  up  once  since  my 
party,  and  then  you  were — 

"Oh,  please  let's  not  start  anything.  Sorry  I  haven't 
been  able  to  get  up  oftener,  but  I've  been  taking  work 
home.  You  know  how  it  is — you  know  when  you  get 
busy  with  your  dancing-school — 

"Oh,  I  meant  to  tell  you.  I'm  through,  just  through 
with  Vashkowska  and  her  horrid  old  school.  She's  a  cat 
and  I  don't  believe  she  ever  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
Russian  ballet,  either.  What  do  you  think  she  had  the 
effrontery  to  tell  me?  She  said  that  I  wasn't  practising 
and  really  trying  to  learn  anything.  And  I've  been  work- 
ing myself  into Really,  my  nerves  were  in  such  a 

shape,  I  would  have  been  in  danger  of  a  nervous  break- 
down if  I  had  kept  on.    Tottykins  told  me  how  she  had 

249 


THE  TRAIL   OF  THE   HAWK 

a  nervous  breakdown,  and  had  me  see  her  doctor,  such  a 
dear,  Dr.  St.  Claire,  so  refined  and  sympathetic,  and  he 
told  me  I  was  right  in  suspecting  that  nobody  takes 
Vashkowska  seriously  any  more,  and,  besides,  I  don't 
think  much  of  all  this  symbolistic  dancing,  anyway,  and 
at  last  I've  found  out  what  I  really  want  to  do.  Oh, 
Carl,  it's  so  wonderful!  I'm  studying  ceramics  with  Miss 
Deitz,  she's  so  wonderful  and  temperamental  and  she 
has  the  dearest  studio  on  Gramercy  Park.  Of  course  I 
haven't  made  anything  yet,  but  I  know  I'm  going  to 
like  it  so  much,  and  Miss  Deitz  says  I  have  a  natural 
taste  for  vahzes  and " 

"Huh?    Oh  yes,  vases.     I  get  you." 

"  (Don't  be  vulgar.)     I'm  going  to  go  down  to  her 

studio  and  work  every  other  day,  and  she  doesn't  think 
you  have  to  work  like  a  scrubwoman  to  succeed,  like  that 
horrid  Vashkowska  did.  Miss  Deitz  has  a  temperament 
herself.  And,  oh,  Carl,  she  says  that  'Gertrude'  isn't 
suited  to  me  (and  'Gertie'  certainly  isn't!)  and  she  calls 
me  'Eltruda.'  Don't  you  think  that's  a  sweet  name? 
Would  you  like  to  call  me  'Eltruda/  sometimes?" 

"Look  here,  Gertie,  I  don't  want  to  butt  in,  and  I'm 
guessing  at  it,  but  looks  to  me  as  though  one  of  these 
artistic  grafters  was  working  you.  What  do  you  know 
about  this  Deitz  person?  Has  she  done  anything  worth 

while?    And  honestly,  Gertie By  the  way,  I  don't 

want  to  be  brutal,  but  I  don't  think  I  could  stand  'El- 
truda/  It  sounds  like  'Tottykins.'" 

"Now  really,  Carl " 

"Wait  a  second.  How  do  you  know  you've  got  what 
you  call  a  temperament  ?  Go  to  it,  and  good  luck,  if  you 
can  get  away  with  it.  But  how  do  you  know  it  isn't 
simply  living  in  a  flat  and  not  having  any  work  to  do 
except  developing  a  temperament?  Why  don't  you  try 
working  with  Ray  in  his  office?  He's  a  mighty  good 
business  man.  This  is  just  a  sugges " 

"Now  really,  this  is " 

250 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"Look  here,  Gertie,  the  thing  I've  always  admired  about 
you  is  your  wholesomeness  and " 

"'Wholesome!'  Oh,  that  word!  As  Miss  Deitz  was 
saying  just  the  other  day,  it's  as  bad " 

"  But  you  are  wholesome,  Gertie.  That  is,  if  you  don't 
let  New  York  turn  your  head;  and  if  you'd  use  your 
ability  on  a  real  job,  like  helping  Ray,  or  teaching — yes, 
or  really  sticking  to  your  ceramics  or  dancing,  and  leave 
the  temperament  business  to  those  who  can  get  away  with 
it.  No,  wait.  I  know  I'm  butting  in;  I  know  that  peo- 
ple won't  go  and  change  their  natures  because  I  ask  them 
to;  but  you  see  you — and  Ray  and  Adelaide — you  are  the 
friends  I  depend  on,  and  so  I  hate  to  see " 

"Now,  Carl  dear,  you  might  let  me  talk,"  said  Gertie, 
in  tones  of  maddening  sweetness.  "As  I  think  it  over,  I 
don't  seem  to  recall  that  you've  been  an  authority  on 
temperament  for  so  very  long.  I  seem  to  remember  that 
you  weren't  so  terribly  wonderful  in  Joralemon!  I'm 
glad  to  be  the  first  to  honor  what  you've  done  in  aviation, 
but  I  don't  know  that  that  gives  you  the  right  to " 

"Never  said  it  did!"  Carl  insisted,  with  fictitious  good 
humor. 

" assume  that  you  are  an  authority  on  tempera- 
ment and  art.  I'm  afraid  that  your  head  has  been  just 
a  little  turned  by — 

"Oh,  hell.  .  .  .  Oh,  I'm  sorry.     That  just  slipped." 

"It  shouldn't  have  slipped,  you  know.  I'm  afraid  it 
can't  be  passed  over  so  easily"  Gertie  might  have  been 
a  bustling  Joralemon  school-teacher  pleasantly  bidding 
the  dirty  Ericson  boy,  "Now  go  and  wash  the  little 
hands." 

Carl  said  nothing.  He  was  bored.  He  wished  that  he 
had  not  become  entangled  in  their  vague  discussion  of 
"temperament." 

Even  more  brightly  Gertie  announced:  "I'm  afraid 
you're  not  in  a  very  good  humor  this  afternoon.  I'm 
sorry  that  my  plans  don't  interest  you.  Of  course,  I 
17  251 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

should  be  very  temperamental  if  I  expected  you  to 
apologize  for  cursing  and  swearing,  so  I  think  I'll  just 

leave  you  here,  and  when  you  feel  better "  She  was 

infuriatingly  cheerful.  " 1  should  be  pleased  to  have 

you  call  me  up.  Good-by,  Carl,  and  I  hope  that  our 
walk  will  do  you  good." 

She  turned  into  a  footpath;  left  him  muttering  in  tones 
of  youthful  injury,  "Jiminy!  I've  done  it  now!" 

He  was  in  Joralemon. 

A  victoria  drove  by  with  a  dowager  who  did  not  seem 
to  be  humbly  courting  the  best  set  in  Joralemon.  A  grin 
lightened  Carl's  face.  He  chuckled:  "By  golly!  Gertie 
handled  it  splendidly!  I'm  to  call  up  and  be  humble, 
and  then — bing! — the  least  I  can  do  is  to  propose  and  be 
led  to  the  altar  and  teach  a  Sunday-school  class  at  St. 
Orgul's  for  the  rest  of  my  life!  Come  hither,  Hawk  Eric- 
son,  let  us  hold  council.  Here's  the  way  Gertie  will  dope 
it  out,  I  guess.  ('Eltruda!')  I'll  dine  in  solitary  regret 
for  saying  'hell' No.  First  I'm  to  walk  down- 
town, alone  and  busy  repenting,  and  then  I'll  feed  alone, 
and  by  eight  o'clock  I'll  be  so  tired  of  myself  that 
I'll  call  up  and  beg  pretty.  Rats!  It's  rotten  mean  to 

dope  it  out  like  that,  but  just  the  same Me  that 

have  done  what  I've  done — worried  to  death  over  one 
accidental  'hell'!  .  .  .  Hey  there,  you  taxi!" 

Grandly  he  rode  through  the  Park,  and  in  an  unrepent- 
ant manner  bowed  to  every  pretty  woman  he  saw,  to  the 
disapproval  of  their  silk-hatted  escorts. 

He  forgot  the  existence  of  Gertie  Cowles  and  the  Old 
Home  Folks. 

But  he  really  could  not  afford  a  taxicab,  and  he  had  to 
make  up  for  it  by  economy.  At  seven-thirty  he  gloomily 
entered  Miggleton's  Restaurant,  on  Forty-second  Street, 
the  least  unbearable  of  the  "Popular  Prices — Tables  for 
Ladies"  dens,  and  slumped  down  at  a  table  near  the 
window.  There  were  few  diners.  Carl  was  as  much  a 
stranger  as  on  the  morning  when  he  had  first  invaded 

252 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

New  York,  to  find  work  with  an  automobile  company, 
and  had  passed  this  same  restaurant;  still  was  he  a 
segregated  stranger,  despite  the  fact  that,  two  blocks 
away,  in  the  Aero  Club,  two  famous  aviators  were  agreeing 
that  there  had  never  been  a  more  consistently  excellent 
flight  in  America  than  Hawk  Ericson's  race  from  Chicago 
to  New  York. 

Carl  considered  the  delights  of  the  Cowles  flat,  Ray's 
stories  about  Plato  and  business,  and  the  sentimental 
things  Gertie  played  on  the  guitar.  He  suddenly  deter- 
mined to  go  off  some  place  and  fly  an  aeroplane;  as  sud- 
denly knew  that  he  was  not  yet  ready  to  return  to  the 
game.  He  read  the  Evening  Telegram  and  cheerlessly 
peered  out  of  the  window  at  the  gray  snow-veil  which 
shrouded  Forty-second  Street. 

As  he  finished  his  dessert  and  stirred  his  coffee  he 
stared  into  a  street-car  stalled  in  a  line  of  traffic  outside. 
Within  the  car,  seen  through  the  snow-mist,  was  a  girl 
of  twenty-two  or  three,  with  satiny  slim  features  and  ash- 
blond  hair.  She  was  radiant  in  white-fox  furs.  Carl 
craned  to  watch.  He  thought  of  the  girl  who,  asking  a 
direction  before  the  Florida  Lunch  Room  in  Chicago,  had 
inspired  him  to  become  a  chauffeur. 

The  girl  in  the  street-car  was  listening  to  her  com- 
panion, who  was  a  dark-haired  girl  with  humor  and  excite- 
ment about  life  in  her  face,  well  set-up,  not  tall,  in  a  smart- 
ly tailored  coat  of  brown  pony-skin  and  a  small  hat  that 
was  all  lines  and  no  trimming.  Both  of  them  seemed 
amused,  possibly  by  the  lofty  melancholy  of  a  traffic  police- 
man beside  the  car,  who  raised  his  hand  as  though  he  had 
high  ideals  and  a  slight  stomach-ache.  The  dark-haired 
girl  tapped  her  round  knees  with  the  joy  of  being  alive. 

The  street-car  started.  Carl  was  already  losing  in  the 
city  jungle  the  two  acquaintances  whom  he  had  just  made. 
The  car  stopped  again,  still  blocked.  Carl  seized  his 
coat,  dropped  a  fifty-cent  piece  on  the  cashier's  desk,  did 
not  wait  for  his  ten  cents  change,  ran  across  the  street 

253 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

(barely  escaping  a  taxicab),  galloped  around  the  end  of 
the  car,  swung  up  on  the  platform. 

As  he  took  a  seat  opposite  the  two  girls  he  asked  him- 
self just  what  he  expected  to  do  now.  The  girls  were  un- 
aware of  his  existence.  And  why  had  he  hurried  ?  The 
car  had  not  started  again.  But  he  studied  his  unconscious 
conquests  from  behind  his  newspaper,  vastly  content. 

In  the  unnatural  quiet  of  the  stalled  car  the  girls  were 
irreverently  discussing  "George."  He  heard  enough  to 
know  that  they  were  of  the  rather  smart,  rather  cultured 
class  known  as  "New-Yorkers" — they  might  be  Russian- 
American  princesses  or  social  workers  or  ill-paid  govern- 
esses or  actresses  or  merely  persons  with  one  motor-car 
and  a  useful  papa  in  the  family. 

But  in  any  case  they  were  not  of  the  kind  he  could 
pick  up. 

The  tall  girl  of  the  ash-blond  hair  seemed  to  be  named 
Olive,  being  quite  unolive  in  tint,  while  her  livelier  com- 
panion was  apparently  christened  Ruth.  Carl  wearied 
of  Olive's  changeless  beauty  as  quickly  as  he  did  of  her 
silver-handled  umbrella.  She  merely  knew  how  to  listen. 
But  the  less  spectacular,  less  beautiful,  less  languorous, 
dark-haired  Ruth  was  born  a  good  comrade.  Her 
laughter  marked  her  as  one  of  the  women  whom  earth- 
quake and  flood  and  child-bearing  cannot  rob  of  a  sense 
of  humor;  she  would  have  the  inside  view,  the  sophisti- 
cated understanding  of  everything. 

The  car  was  at  last  free  of  the  traffic.  It  turned  a 
corner  and  started  northward.  Carl  studied  the  girls. 

Ruth  was  twenty-four,  perhaps,  or  twenty-five.  Not 
tall,  slight  enough  to  nestle,  but  strong  and  self-reliant. 
She  had  quantities  of  dark-brown  hair,  crisp  and  glinty, 
though  not  sleek,  with  eyebrows  noticeably  dark  and 
heavy.  Her  smile  was  made  irresistible  by  her  splendidly 
shining  teeth,  fairly  large  but  close-set  and  white;  and 
not  only  the  corners  of  her  eyes  joined  in  her  smile,  but 
even  her  nose,  her  delicate  yet  piquant  nose,  which  could 

254 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

quiver  like  a  deer's.  When  she  laughed,  Carl  noted,  Ruth 
had  a  trick  of  lifting  her  heavy  lids  quickly,  and  surpris- 
ing one  with  a  glint  of  blue  eyes  where  brown  were  ex- 
pected. Her  smooth,  healthy,  cream-colored  skin  was 
rosy  with  winter,  and  looked  as  though  in  summer  it 
would  tan  evenly,  without  freckles.  Her  chin  was  soft, 
but  without  a  dimple,  and  her  jaws  had  a  clean,  boyish 
leanness.  Her  smooth  neck  and  delicious  shoulders  were 
curved,  not  fatly,  but  with  youth  and  happiness.  They 
were  square,  capable  shoulders,  with  no  mid-Victorian 
droop  about  them.  Her  waist  was  slender  naturally,  not 
from  stays.  Her  short  but  not  fat  fingers  were  the  ideal 
instruments  for  the  piano.  Slim  were  her  crossed  feet, 
and  her  unwrinkled  pumps  (foolish  footgear  for  a  snowy 
evening)  seemed  eager  to  dance. 

There  was  no  hint  of  the  coquette  about  her.  Physical 
appeal  this  Ruth  had,  but  it  was  the  allure  of  sunlight 
and  meadows,  of  tennis  and  a  boat  with  bright,  canted 
sails,  not  of  boudoir  nor  garden  dizzy-scented  with  jas- 
mine. She  was  young  and  clean,  sweet  without  being 
sprinkled  with  pink  sugar;  too  young  to  know  much 
about  the  world's  furious  struggle;  too  happy  to  have 
realized  its  inevitable  sordidness;  yet  born  a  woman  who 
would  not  always  wish  to  be  "protected,"  and  round 
whom  all  her  circle  of  life  would  center.  .  .  . 

So  Carl  inarticulately  mused,  with  the  intentness  which 
one  gives  to  strangers  in  a  quiet  car,  till  he  laughed,  "I 
feel  as  if  I  knew  her  like  a  book."  The  century's  greatest 
problem  was  whether  he  would  finally  prefer  her  to  Olive, 

if  he  knew  them.  If  he  could  speak  to  them But 

that  was,  in  New  York,  more  difficult  than  beating  a 
policeman  or  getting  acquainted  with  the  mayor.  He 
would  lose  them. 

Already  they  were  rising,  going  out. 

He  couldn't  let  them  be  lost.  He  glanced  out  of  the 
window,  sprang  up  with  an  elaborate  pretense  that  he 
had  come  to  his  own  street.  He  followed  them  out,  still 

255 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

conning  head-lines  in  his  paper.  His  grave  absorption 
said,  plain  that  all  might  behold,  that  he  was  a  respec- 
table citizen  to  whom  it  would  never  occur  to  pursue 
strange  young  women. 

His  new  friends  had  been  close  to  him  in  the  illuminated 
car,  but  they  were  alien,  unapproachable,  when  they 
stood  on  an  unfamiliar  street-crossing  snow-dimmed  and 
silent  with  night.  He  stared  at  a  street-sign  and  found 
that  he  was  on  Madison  Avenue,  up  in  the  Fifties.  As 
they  turned  east  on  Fifty-blankth  Street  he  stopped  under 
the  street-light,  took  an  envelope  from  his  pocket,  and 
found  on  it  the  address  of  that  dear  old  friend,  living  on 
Fifty-blankth,  on  whom  he  was  going  to  call.  This  was 
to  convince  the  policeman  of  the  perfect  purity  of  his  in- 
tentions. The  fact  that  there  was  no  policeman  nearer 
than  the  man  on  fixed  post  a  block  away  did  not  lessen 
Carl's  pleasure  in  the  make-believe.  He  industriously 
inspected  the  house-numbers  as  he  followed  the  quick- 
ly moving  girls,  and  frequently  took  out  his  watch. 
Nothing  should  make  him  late  in  calling  on  that  dear  old 
friend. 

Not  since  Adam  glowered  at  the  intruder  Eve  has  a 
man  been  so  darkly  uninterested  in  two  charmers.  He 
stared  clear  through  them;  he  looked  over  their  heads; 
he  observed  objects  on  the  other  side  of  the  street.  He 
indignantly  told  the  imaginary  policemen  who  stopped 
him  that  he  hadn't  even  seen  the  girls  till  this  moment; 
that  he  was  the  victim  of  a  plot. 

The  block  through  which  the  cavalcade  was  passing 
was  lined  with  shabby-genteel  brownstone  houses,  with 
high  stoops  and  haughty  dark  doors,  and  dressmakers' 
placards  or  doctors'  cards  in  the  windows.  Carl  was 
puzzled.  The  girls  seemed  rather  too  cheerful  to  belong 
in  this  decayed  and  gloomy  block,  which,  in  the  days 
when  horsehair  furniture  and  bankers  had  mattered,  had 
seemed  imposing.  But  the  girls  ascended  the  steps  of 
a  house  which  was  typical  of  the  row,  except  that  five 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

motor-cars  stood  before  it.     Carl,  passing,  went  up  the 
steps  of  the  next  house  and  rang  the  bell. 

"What  a  funny  place!"  he  heard  one  of  the  girls — he 
judged  that  it  was  Ruth — remark  from  the  neighboring 
stoop.  "It  looks  exactly  like  Aunt  Emma  when  she 
wears  an  Alexandra  bang.  Do  we  go  right  up  ?  Oughtn't 
we  to  ring?  It  ought  to  be  the  craziest  party — an- 
archists  " 

"A  party,  eh?"  thought  Carl. 

" ought  to  ring,  I  suppose,  but Yes,  there's 

sure  to  be  all  sorts  of  strange  people  at  Mrs.  Hallet's 

said  the  voice  of  the  other  girl,  then  the  door  closed  upon 
both  of  them. 

And  an  abashed  Carl  realized  that  a  maid  had  opened 
the  door  of  the  house  at  which  he  himself  had  rung,  and 
was  glaring  at  him  as  he  craned  over  to  view  the  next- 
door  stoop. 

"W-where Does  Dr.  Brown  live  here?"  he  stut- 
tered. 

"No,  'e  don't,"  the  maid  snapped,  closing  the  door. 

Carl  groaned:  "He  don't?  Dear  old  Brown?  Not 
live  here?  Huh?  What  shall  I  do?" 

In  remarkably  good  spirits  he  moved  over  in  front  of 
the  house  into  which  Ruth  and  Olive  had  gone.  People 
were  coming  to  the  party  in  twos  and  threes.  Yes.  The 
men  were  in  evening  clothes.  He  had  his  information. 

Swinging  his  stick  up  to  a  level  with  his  shoulder  at 
each  stride,  he  raced  to  Fifty-ninth  Street  and  the  nearest 
taxi-stand.  He  was  whirled  to  his  room.  He  literally 
threw  his  clothes  off.  He  shaved  hastily,  singing,  "Will 
You  Come  to  the  Ball,"  from  "The  Quaker  Girl,"  and 
slipped  into  evening  clothes  and  his  suavest  dress-shirt. 
Seizing  things  all  at  once — top-hat,  muffler,  gloves,  pocket- 
book,  handkerchief,  cigarette-case,  keys — and  hanging 
them  about  him  as  he  fled  down  the  decorous  stairs,  he 
skipped  to  the  taxicab  and  started  again  for  Fifty- 
blankth  Street. 

257 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

At  the  house  of  the  party  he  stopped  to  find  on  the 
letter-box  in  the  entry  the  name  "Mrs.  Hallet,"  men- 
tioned by  Olive.  There  was  no  such  name.  He  tried  the 
inner  door.  It  opened.  He  cheerily  began  to  mount 
steep  stairs,  which  kept  on  for  miles,  climbing  among 
slate-colored  walls,  past  empty  wall-niches  with  toeless 
plaster  statues.  The  hallways,  dim  and  high  and  snobbish, 
and  the  dark  old  double  doors,  scowled  at  him.  He 
boldly  returned  the  scowl.  He  could  hear  the  increasing 
din  of  a  talk-party  coming  from  above.  When  he  reached 
the  top  floor  he  found  a  door  open  on  a  big  room  crowded 
with  shrilly  chattering  people  in  florid  clothes.  There  was 
a  hint  of  brassware  and  paintings  and  silken  Turkish  rugs. 

But  no  sight  of  Ruth  or  Olive. 

A  maid  was  bobbing  to  him  and  breathing,  "That  way, 
please,  at  the  end  of  the  hall."  He  went  meekly.  He 
did  not  dare  to  search  the  clamorous  crowd  for  the  girls, 
as  yet. 

He  obediently  added  his  hat  and  coat  and  stick  to  an 
uncomfortable-looking  pile  of  wraps  writhing  on  a  bed 
in  a  small  room  that  had  a  Copley  print  of  Sargent's 
"Prophets,"  a  calendar,  and  an  unimportant  white 
rocker. 

It  was  time  to  go  out  and  face  the  party,  but  he  had 
stage-fright.  While  climbing  the  stairs  he  had  believed 
that  he  was  in  touch  with  the  two  girls,  but  now  he  was 
separated  from  them  by  a  crowd,  farther  from  them  than 
when  he  had  followed  them  down  the  unfriendly  street. 
And  not  till  now  did  he  quite  grasp  the  fact  that  the 
hostess  might  not  welcome  him.  His  glowing  game  was 
becoming  very  dull-toned.  He  lighted  a  cigarette  and 
listened  to  the  beating  surf  of  the  talk  in  the  other  room. 

Another  man  came  in.  Like  all  the  rest,  he  gave  up 
the  brilliant  idea  of  trying  to  find  an  unpreempted  place 
for  his  precious  newly  ironed  silk  hat,  and  resignedly 
dumped  it  on  the  bed.  He  was  a  passable  man,  with  a 
gentlemanly  mustache  and  good  pumps.  Carl  knew 

258 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

that  fact  because  he  was  comparing  his  own  clothes  and 
deciding  that  he  had  none  the  worst  of  it.  But  he  was 
relieved  when  the  waxed  mustache  moved  a  couple  of 
times,  and  its  owner  said,  in  a  friendly  way:  "Beastly 
jam!  .  .  .  May  I  trouble  you  for  a  match?" 

Carl  followed  him  out  to  the  hostess,  a  small,  busy 
woman  who  made  a  business  of  being  vivacious  and  letting 
the  light  catch  the  fringes  of  her  gold  hair  as  she  nodded. 
Carl  nonchalantly  shook  hands  with  her,  bubbling:  "So 
afraid  couldn't  get  here.  My  play But  at  last " 

He  was  in  a  panic.  But  the  hostess,  instead  of  calling 
for  the  police,  gushed,  "So  glad  you  could  come!"  combin- 
ing a  kittenish  mechanical  smile  for  him  with  a  glance 
over  his  shoulder  at  the  temporary  butler.  "I  want  you 
to  meet  Miss  Moelier,  Mr. — uh — Mr " 

"I  knew  you'd  forget  it!"  Carl  was  brotherly  and  pro- 
tecting in  his  manner.  "Ericson,  Oscar  Ericson." 

"Oh,  of  course.  How  stupid  of  me!  Miss  Moelier, 
want  you  to  meet  Mr.  Oscar  Ericson — you  know J 

"S*  happy  meet  you,  Miss  Mmmmmmm,"  said  Carl, 
tremendously  well-bred  in  manner.  "Can  we  possibly 
go  over  and  be  clever  in  a  corner,  do  you  think?" 

He  had  heard  Colonel  Haviland  say  that,  but  his  man- 
ner gave  it  no  quotation-marks. 

Presumably  he  talked  to  Miss  Moelier  about  something 
usual — the  snow  or  the  party  or  Owen  Johnson's  novels. 
Presumably  Miss  Moelier  had  eyes  to  look  into  and 
banalities  to  vlook  away  from.  Presumably  there  was 
something  in  the  room  besides  people  and  talk  and  rugs 
hung  over  the  bookcases.  But  Carl  never  knew.  He 
was  looking  for  Ruth.  He  did  not  see  her. 

Within  ten  minutes  he  had  manoeuvered  himself  free  of 
Miss  Moelier  and  was  searching  for  Ruth,  his  nerves 
quivering  amazingly  with  the  fear  that  she  might  already 
have  gone. 

How  would  he  ever  find  her?  He  could  scarce  ask  the 
hostess,  "Say,  where's  Ruth?" 

259 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

She  was  nowhere  in  the  fog  of  people  in  the  big  room. 
...  If  he  could  find  even  Olive.  .  .  . 

Strolling,  nodding  to  perfectly  strange  people  who 
agreeably  nodded  back  under  the  mistaken  impression 
that  they  were  glad  to  see  him,  he  systematically  checked 
up  all  the  groups.  Ruth  was  not  among  the  punch-table 
devotees,  who  were  being  humorous  and  amorous  over 
cigarettes;  not  among  the  Caustic  Wits  exclusively  as- 
sembled in  a  corner;  not  among  the  shy  sisters  aligned  on 
the  davenport  and  wondering  why  they  had  come;  not 
in  the  general  maelstrom  in  the  center  of  the  room. 

He  stopped  calmly  to  greet  the  hostess  again,  remark- 
ing, "You  look  so  beautifully  sophisticated  to-night," 
and  listened  suavely  to  her  fluttering  remarks.  He  was 
the  picture  of  the  cynical  cityman  who  has  to  be  nowhere 
at  no  especial  time.  But  he  was  not  cynical.  He  had  to 
find  Ruth! 

He  escaped  and,  between  the  main  room  and  the 
dining-room,  penetrated  a  small  den  filled  with  witty 
young  men,  old  stories,  cigarette-smoke,  and  siphons. 
Then  he  charged  into  the  dining-room,  where  there  were 
candles  and  plate  much  like  silver — and  Ruth  and  Olive 
at  the  farther  end. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

HE  wanted  to  run  forward,  take  their  hands,  cry,  "At 
last!"  He  seemed  to  hear  his  voice  wording  it. 
But,  not  glancing  at  them  again,  he  established  himself 
on  a  chair  by  the  doorway  between  the  two  rooms. 

It  was  safe  to  watch  the  two  girls  in  this  Babel,  where 
words  swarmed  and  battled  everywhere  in  the  air.  Ruth 
was  in  a  brown  velvet  frock  whose  golden  tones  har- 
monized with  her  brown  hair.  She  was  being  enthusiasti- 
cally talked  at  by  a  man  to  whom  she  listened  with  a 
courteously  amused  curiosity.  Carl  could  fancy  her 
nudging  Olive,  who  sat  beside  her  on  the  Jacobean  settee 
and  was  attended  by  another  talking -man.  Carl  told 
Ruth  (though  she  did  not  know  that  he  was  telling  her) 
that  she  had  no  right  to  be  "so  blasted  New-Yorkishly 
superior  and  condescending,"  but  he  admitted  that  she 
was  scarcely  to  blame,  for  the  man  made  kindergarten 
gestures  and  emitted  conversation  like  air  from  an  ex- 
ploded tire. 

The  important  thing  was  that  he  heard  the  man  call 
her  "Miss  Winslow." 

"Great!     Got  her  name— Ruth  Winslow!" 

Watching  the  man's  lips  (occasionally  trying  to  find  an 
excuse  for  eavesdropping,  and  giving  up  the  quest  because 
there  was  no  excuse),  he  discovered  that  Ruth  was  being 
honored  with  a  thrilling  account  of  aviation.  The  talk- 
ing-man, it  appeared,  knew  a  great  deal  about  the  subject. 
Carl  heard  through  a  rift  in  the  cloud  of  words  that  the 
man  had  once  actually  flown,  as  a  passenger  with  Henry 
Odell!  For  five  minutes  on  end,  judging  by  the  motions 

261 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

with  which  he  steered  a  monoplane  through  perilous 
abysses,  the  reckless  spirit  kept  flying  (as  a  passenger). 
Ruth  Winslow  was  obviously  getting  bored,  and  the  man 
showed  no  signs  of  volplaning  as  yet.  Olive's  man  de- 
parted, and  Olive  was  also  listening  to  the  parlor  aviator, 
who  was  unable  to  see  that  a  terrific  fight  was  being  waged 
by  the  hands  of  the  two  girls  in  the  space  down  between 
them.  It  was  won  by  Ruth's  hand,  which  got  a  death- 
grip  on  Olive's  thumb,  and  held  it,  to  Olive's  agony,  while 
both  girls  sat  up  straight  and  beamed  propriety. 

Carl  walked  over  and,  smoothly  ignoring  the  pocket 
entertainer,  said:  "So  glad  to  see  you,  Miss  Winslow. 
I  think  this  is  my  dance?" 

"Y-yes?"  from  Miss  Winslow,  while  the  entertainer 
drifted  off  into  the  flotsam  of  the  party.  Olive  went  to 
join  a  group  about  the  hostess,  who  had  just  come  in  to 
stir  up  mirth  and  jocund  merriment  in  the  dining-room, 
as  it  had  settled  down  into  a  lower  state  of  exhilaration 
than  the  canons  of  talk-parties  require. 

Said  Carl  to  Ruth,  "Not  that  there's  any  dancing,  but 
I  felt  you'd  get  dizzy  if  you  climbed  any  higher  in  that 
aeroplane." 

Ruth  tried  to  look  haughty,  but  her  dark  lashes  went 
up  and  her  unexpected  blue  eyes  grinned  at  him  boy- 
ishly. 

"Gee!  she's  clever!"  Carl  was  thinking.  Since,  to  date, 
her  only  remark  had  been  "Y-yes?"  he  may  have  been 
premature. 

"That  was  a  bully  strangle  hold  you  got  on  Miss  Olive's 
hand,  Miss  Winslow." 

"You  saw  our  hands?" 

"Perhaps.  .  .  .  Tell  me  a  good  way  to  express  how  su- 
perior you  and  I  are  to  this  fool  party  and  its  noise. 
Isn't  it  a  fool  party?" 

"I'm  afraid  it  really  is." 

"What's  the  purpose  of  it,  anyway?  Do  the  people 
have  to  come  here  and  breathe  this  air,  I  wonder?  I 

262 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

asked  several  people  that,  and  I'm  afraid  they  think  I'm 
crazy." 

"But  you  are  here?  Do  you  come  to  Mrs.  Salisbury's 
often?" 

"Never  been  before.  Never  seen  a  person  here  in  my 
life  before — except  you  and  Miss  Olive.  Came  on  a 
bet.  Chap  bet  I  wouldn't  dare  come  without  being  in- 
vited. I  came.  Bowed  to  the  hostess  and  told  her  I 
was  so  sorry  my  play- rehearsals  made  me  late,  and  she 
was  so  glad  I  could  come,  after  all — you  know.  She's 
never  seen  me  in  her  life." 

"Oh?    Are  you  a  dramatist?" 

"I  was — in  the  other  room.  But  I  was  a  doctor  out 
in  the  hall  and  a  sculptor  on  the  stairs,  so  I'm  getting  sort 
of  confused  myself — as  confused  as  you  are,  trying  to 
remember  who  I  am,  Miss  Winslow.  You  really  don't 
remember  me  at  all?  Tea  at — wasn't  it  at  the  Vander- 
bilt?  or  the  Plaza?" 

"Oh  yes,  that  must  have  been I  was  trying  to 

remember " 

Carl  grinned.  "The  chap  who  introduced  me  to  you 
called  me  'Mr.  Um-m-m,'  because  he  didn't  remember 
my  name,  either.  So  you've  never  heard  it.  It  happens 
to  be  Ericson.  .  .  .  I'm  on  a  mission.  Serious  one.  I'm 
planning  to  go  out  and  buy  a  medium-sized  bomb  and 
blow  up  this  bunch.  I  suspect  there's  poets  around." 

"I  do  too,"  sighed  Ruth.  "I  understand  that  Mrs. 
Salisbury  always  has  seven  lawyers  and  nineteen  adver- 
tising men  and  a  dentist  and  a  poet  and  an  explorer  at 
her  affairs.  Are  you  the  poet  or  the  explorer?" 

"I'm  the  dentist.     I  think You  don't  happen  to 

have  done  any  authoring,  do  you?" 

"Well,  nothing  except  an  epic  poyem  on  Jonah  and  the 
Whale,  which  I  wrote  at  the  age  of  seven.  Most  of  it 
consisted  of  a  conversation  between  them,  while  Jonah 
was  in  the  Whale's  stomach,  which  I  think  showed  agility 
on  the  part  of  the  Whale." 

263 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Then  maybe  it's  safe  to  say  what  I  think  of  authors — 
and  more  or  less  of  poets  and  painters  and  so  on.  One 
time  I  was  in  charge  of  some  mechanical  investigations, 
and  a  lot  of  writers  used  to  come  around  looking  for  what 
they  called  'copy/  That's  where  I  first  got  my  grouch 
on  them,  and  I've  never  really  got  over  it;  and  coming  here 
to-night  and  hearing  the  littery  talk  I've  been  thinking 
how  these  authors  have  a  sort  of  an  admiration  trust. 
They  make  authors  the  heroes  of  their  stories  and  so  on, 
and  so  they  make  people  think  that  writing  is  sacred. 
I'm  so  sick  of  reading  novels  about  how  young  Bill,  as 
had  a  pure  white  soul,  came  to  New  York  and  had  an 
'orrible  time  till  his  great  novel  was  accepted.  Authors 
seem  to  think  they're  the  only  ones  that  have  ideals. 
Now  I'm  in  the  automobile  business,  and  I  help  to  make 
people  get  out  into  the  country — bet  a  lot  more  of  them 
get  out  because  of  motoring  than  because  of  reading 
poetry  about  spring.  But  if  I  claimed  a  temperament 
because  I  introduce  the  motorist's  soul  to  the  daisy,  every 
one  would  die  laughing." 

"But  don't  you  think  that  art  is  the — oh,  the  object 
of  civilization  and  that  sort  of  thing?" 

"I  do  not!  Honestly,  Miss  Winslow,  I  think  it  would 
be  a  good  stunt  to  get  along  without  any  art  at  all  for  a 
generation,  and  see  what  we  miss.  We  probably  need 
dance  music,  but  I  doubt  if  we  need  opera.  Funny  how 
the  world  always  praises  its  opera-singers  so  much  and 
pays  'em  so  well  and  then  starves  its  shoemakers,  and 
yet  it  needs  good  shoes  so  much  more  than  it  needs  opera 
— or  war  or  fiction.  I'd  like  to  see  all  the  shoemakers 
get  together  and  refuse  to  make  any  more  shoes  till 
people  promised  to  write  reviews  about  them,  like  all  these 
book-reviews.  Then  just  as  soon  as  people's  shoes  began 
to  wear  out  they'd  come  right  around,  and  you'd  read 
about  the  new  masterpieces  of  Mr.  Regal  and  Mr.  Walk- 
over and  Mr.  Stetson." 

"Yes!  I  can  imagine  it.  'This  laced  boot  is  one  of 

264 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

the  most  vital  and  gripping  and  wholesome  shoes  of  the 
season/  And  probably  all  the  young  shoemakers  would 
sit  around  cafes,  looking  quizzical  and  artistic.  But  don't 
you  think  your  theory  is  dangerous,  Mr.  Ericson?  You 
give  me  an  excuse  for  being  content  with  being  a  common- 
place Upper- West-Sider.  And  aren't  authors  better  than 
commonplaceness?  You're  so  serious  that  I  almost  sus- 
pect you  of  having  started  to  be  an  author  yourself." 

"Really  not.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I'm  the  kiddy  in 
patched  overalls  you  used  to  play  with  when  you  kept 
house  in  the  willows." 

"Oh,  of  course!  In  the  Forest  of  Ardent  And  you 
had  a  toad  that  you  traded  for  my  hair-ribbon." 

"And  we  ate  bread  and  milk  out  of  blue  bowls!" 

"Oh  yes!"  she  agreed,  "blue  bowls  with  bunny-rabbits 
painted  on  them." 

"And  giants  and  a  six-cylinder  castle,  with  warders 
and  a  donjon  keep.  And  Jack  the  Giant-killer.  But 
certainly  bunnies." 

"Do  you  really  like  bunnies?"  Her  voice  caressed  the 
word. 

"I  like  them  so  much  that  when  I  think  of  them  I  know 
that  there's  one  thing  worse  than  having  a  cut-rate  literary 
salon,  and  that's  to  be  too  respectable 

"Too  Upper-West-Side!" 
' to  dare  to  eat  bread  and  milk  out  of  blue  bowls." 

"Yes,  I  think  I  shall  have  to  admit  you  to  the  Blue 
Bowl  League,  Mr.  Ericson.  Speaking  of  which —  Tell 
me,  who  did  introduce  us,  you  and  me?  I  feel  so  apolo- 
getic for  not  remembering." 

"Mayn't  I  be  a  mystery,  Miss  Winslow?  At  least  as 
long  as  I  have  this  new  shirt,  which  you  observed  with 
some  approval  while  I  was  drooling  on  about  authors? 
It  makes  me  look  like  a  count,  you  must  admit.  Or 
maybe  like  a  Knight  of  the  Order  of  the  Bunny  Rabbit. 
Please  let  me  be  a  mystery  still." 

"Yes,  you  may.     Life  has  no  mysteries  left  except 
265 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Olive's  coiffure  and  your  beautiful  shirt.  .  .  .  Does  one  talk 
about  shirts  at  a  second  meeting?" 

"Apparently  one  does." 

"Yes.  .  .  .  To-night,  I  must  have  a  mystery.  .  .  .  Do  you 
swear,  as  a  man  of  honor,  that  you  are  at  this  party  dis- 
honorably, uninvited  ?" 

"I  do,  princess." 

"Well,  so  am  I!  Olive  was  invited  to  come,  with  a 
man,  but  he  was  called  away  and  she  dragged  me  here, 
promising  me  I  should  see " 

"Anarchists?" 

"Yes!  And  the  only  nice  lovable  crank  I've  found — 
except  you,  with  your  vulgar  prejudice  against  the  whole 
race  of  authors — is  a  dark-eyed  female  who  sits  on  a 
couch  out  in  the  big  room,  like  a  Mrs.  St.  Simeon  Stylites 
in  a  tight  skirt,  and  drags  you  in  by  her  glittering  eye, 
looking  as  though  she  was  going  to  speak  about  theosophy, 
and  then  asks  you  if  you  think  a  highball  would  help  her 
cold." 

"I  think  I  know  the  one  you  mean.  When  I  saw  her 
she  was  talking  to  a  man  whose  beating  whiskers  dashed 
high  on  a  stern  and  rock-bound  face.  .  .  .  Thank  you,  I 
like  that  fairly  well,  too,  but  unfortunately  I  stole  it 
from  a  chap  named  Haviland.  My  own  idea  of  witty 
conversation:  is  'Some  car  you  got.  What's  your  mag- 
neto?'" 

"Look.  Olive  Dunleavy  seems  distressed.  The  num- 
ber of  questions  I  shall  have  to  answer  about  you!  .  .  . 
Well,  Olive  and  I  felt  very  low  in  our  minds  to-day.  We 
decided  that  we  were  tired  of  select  associations,  and  that 
we  would  seek  the  Primitive,  and  maybe  even  Life  in 
the  Raw.  Olive  knows  a  woman  mountain-climber  who 
always  says  she  longs  to  go  back  to  the  wilds,  so  we 
went  down  to  her  flat.  We  expected  to  have  raw-meat 
sandwiches,  at  the  very  least,  but  the  Savage  Woman 
gave  us  Suchong  and  deviled-chicken  sandwiches  and 
pink  cakes  and  Nabiscos,  and  told  us  how  well  her  son 

266 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

was  doing  in  his  Old  French  course  at  Columbia.  So  we 
got  lower  and  lower  in  our  minds,  and  we  decided  we  had 
to  go  down  to  Chinatown  for  dinner.  We  went,  too! 

I've  done  a  little  settlement  work Dear  me,  I'm 

telling  you  too  much  about  myself,  O  Man  of  Mystery! 
It  isn't  quite  done,  I'm  afraid." 

"Please,  Miss  Winslow!  In  the  name  of  the — what 
was  it — Order  of  the  Blue  Bowl?"  He  was  making  a 
mental  note  that  Olive's  last  name  was  Dunleavy. 

"Well,  I've  done  some  settlement  work Did  you 

ever  do  any,  by  any  chance  ?" 

"I  once  converted  a  Chinaman  to  Lutheranism;  I 
think  that  was  my  nearest  approach,"  said  Carl. 

"My  work  was  the  kind  where  you  go  in  and  look  at 
three  dirty  children  and  teach  them  that  they'll  be  happy 
if  they're  good,  when  you  know  perfectly  well  that  their 
only  chance  to  be  happy  is  to  be  bad  as  anything  and 
sneak  off  to  go  swimming  in  the  East  River.  But  it  kept 
me  from  being  very  much  afraid  of  the  Bowery  (we  went 
down  on  the  surface  cars),  but  Olive  was  scared  beauti- 
fully. There  was  the  dearest,  most  inoffensive  old  man 
in  the  most  perfect  state  of  intoxication  sitting  next  to 
us  in  the  car,  and  when  Olive  moved  away  from  him  he 
winked  over  at  me  and  said,  'Honor  your  shruples,  ma'am, 
ver'  good  form.1  I  think  Olive  thought  he  was  going  to 
murder  us — she  was  sure  he  was  the  wild,  dying  remnant 
of  a  noble  race  or  something.  But  even  she  was  disap- 
pointed in  Chinatown. 

"We  had  expected  opium-fiends,  like  the  melodramas 
they  used  to  have  on  Fourteenth  Street,  before  the  movies 
came.  But  we  had  a  disgustingly  clean  table,  with  a 
mad,  reckless  picture  worked  in  silk,  showing  two  doves 
and  a  boiled  lotos  flower,  hanging  near  us,  to  intimidate 
us.  The  waiter  was  a  Harvard  graduate,  I  know — per- 
haps Oxford — and  he  said,  'May  I  sugges'  ladies  velly, 
nize  China  dinner?'  He  suggested  chow-main  —  we 
thought  it  would  be  either  birds'  nests  or  rats'  tails,  and 
18  267 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

it  was  simply  crisp  noodles  with  the  most  innocuous 
sauce.  .  .  .  And  the  people!  They  were  all  stupid  tourists 
like  ourselves,  except  for  a  Jap,  with  his  cunnin'  Sunday 
tie,  and  his  little  trousers  all  so  politely  pressed,  and  his 
clean  pocket-hanky.  And  he  was  reading  The  Presby- 
terian! .  .  .  Then  we  came  up  here,  and  it  doesn't  seern  so 
very  primitive  here,  either.  It's  most  aggravating.  .  .  . 
It  seems  to  me  I've  been  telling  you  an  incredible  lot 
about  our  silly  adventures — you're  probably  the  man 
who  won  the  Indianapolis  motor-race  or  discovered  elec- 
tricity or  something." 

Through  her  narrative,  her  eyes  had  held  his,  but 
now  she  glanced  about,  noted  Olive,  and  seemed  un- 
easy. 

"I'm  afraid  I'm  nothing  so  interesting,"  he  said;  "but 
I  have  wanted  to  see  new  places  and  new  things — and  I've 
more  or  less  seen  'em.  When  I've  got  tired  of  one  town, 
I've  simply  up  and  beat  it,  and  when  I  got  there — wher- 
ever there  was — I've  looked  for  a  job.  And Well, 

I  haven't  lost  anything  by  it." 

"Have  you  really?  That's  the  most  wonderful  thing 
to  do  in  the  world.  My  travels  have  been  Cook's  tours, 
with  our  own  little  Thomas  Cook  and  Son  right  in  the 
family — I've  never  even  had  the  mad  freedom  of  choosing 
between  a  tour  of  the  Irish  bogs  and  an  educational  pil- 
grimage to  the  shrines  of  celebrated  brewers.  My  people 

have  always  chosen  for  me.  But  I've  wanted One 

doesn't  merely  go  without  having  an  objective,  or  an  ex- 
cuse for  going,  I  suppose." 

"I  do,"  declared  Carl.     "But May  I  be  honest ?" 

"Yes." 

Intimacy  was  about  them.  They  were  two  travelers 
from  a  far  land,  come  together  in  the  midst  of  strangers. 

"I  speak  of  myself  as  globe-trotting,"  said  Carl.  "I 
have  been.  But  for  a  good  many  weeks  I've  been  here 
in  New  York,  knowing  scarcely  any  one,  and  restless, 
yet  I  haven't  felt  like  hiking  off,  because  I  was  sick  for  a 

268 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

time,  and  because  a  chap  that  was  going  to  Brazil  with 
me  died  suddenly." 

"To  Brazil?     Exploring?" 

"Yes — just  a  stab  at  it,  pure  amateur.  .  .  .  I'm  not  at 
all  sure  I'm  just  making-believe  when  I  speak  of  blue 
bowls  and  so  on.  Tell  me.  In  the  West,  one  would  speak 
of  *  seeing  the  girls  home/  How  would  one  say  that 
gracefully  in  New-Yorkese,  so  that  I  might  have  the 
chance  to  beguile  Miss  Olive  Dunleavy  and  Miss  Ruth 
Winslow  into  letting  me  see  them  home?" 

"Really,  we're  not  a  bit  afraid  to  go  home  alone." 

"I  won't  tease,  but May  I  come  to  your  house  for 

tea,  some  time?" 

She  hesitated.  It  came  out  with  a  rush.  "Yes.  Do 
come  up.  N-next  Sunday,  if  you'd  like." 

She  bobbed  her  head  to  Olive  and  rose. 

"And  the  address?"  he  insisted. 

" West  Ninety-second  Street.  .  .  .  Good  night.     I; 

have  enjoyed  the  blue  bowl." 

Carl  made  his  decent  devoirs  to  his  hostess  and  tramped 
up-town  through  the  flying  snow,  swinging  his  stick  like 
an  orchestra  conductor,  and  whistling  a  waltz. 

As  he  reached  home  he  thought  again  of  his  sordid 
parting  with  Gertie  in  the  Park — years  ago,  that  after- 
noon. But  the  thought  had  to  wait  in  the  anteroom 
of  his  mind  while  he  rejoiced  over  the  fact  that  he  was 
to  see  his  new  playmate  the  coming  Sunday. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

IKE  a  country  small  boy  waiting  for  the  coming  of 
his  city  cousin,  who  will  surely  have  new  ways  of 
playing  Indians,  Carl  prepared  to  see  Ruth  Winslow 
and  her  background.  What  was  she?  Who?  Where? 
He  pictured  her  as  dwelling  in  everything  from  a  mil- 
lionaire's imitation  chateau,  with  footmen  and  automatic 
elevators,  to  a  bachelor  girl's  flat  in  an  old-fashioned  red- 
brick Harlem  tenement.  But  more  than  that:  What 
would  she  herself  be  like  against  that  background? 

Monday  he  could  think  of  nothing  but  the  joy  of  hav- 
ing discovered  a  playmate.  The  secret  popped  out  from 
behind  everything  he  did.  Tuesday  he  was  worried  by 
rinding  himself  unable  to  remember  whether  Ruth's  hair 
was  black  or  dark  brown.  Yet  he  could  visualize  Olive's 
ash-blond.  Why?  Wednesday  afternoon,  when  he  was 
sleepy  in  the  office  after  eating  too  much  beefsteak  and 
kidney  pie,  drinking  too  much  coffee,  and  smoking  too 
many  cigarettes,  at  lunch  with  Mr.  VanZile,  when  he  was 
tortured  by  the  desire  to  lay  his  head  on  his  arms  and 
yield  to  drowsiness,  he  was  suddenly  invaded  by  a  fear 
that  Ruth  was  snobbish.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  ought 
to  do  something  about  it  immediately. 

The  rest  of  the  week  he  merely  waited  to  see  what 
sort  of  person  the  totally  unknown  Miss  Ruth  Winslow 
might  be.  His  most  active  occupation  outside  the  office 
was  feeling  guilty  over  not  telephoning  to  Gertie. 

At  3.30  P.M.,  Sunday,  he  was  already  incased  in 
funereal  morning-clothes  and  warning  himself  that  he 
must  not  arrive  at  Miss  Winslow's  before  five.  His 

270 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

clothes  were  new,  stiff  as  though  they  belonged  to  a  wax 
dummy.  Their  lines  were  straight  and  without  in- 
dividuality. He  hitched  his  shoulders  about  and  kept 
going  to  the  mirror  to  inspect  the  fit  of  the  collar.  He 
repeatedly  rebrushed  his  hair,  regarding  the  unclean  state 
of  his  military  brushes  with  disgust.  About  six  times  he 
went  to  the  window  to  see  if  it  had  started  to  snow. 

At  ten  minutes  to  four  he  sternly  jerked  on  his  coat 
and  walked  far  north  of  Ninety-second  Street,  then 
back. 

He  arrived  at  a  quarter  to  five,  but  persuaded  himself 
that  this  was  a  smarter  hour  of  arrival  than  five. 

Ruth  Winslow's  home  proved  to  be  a  rather  ordinary 
three-story-and-basement  graystone  dwelling,  with  heavy 
Russian  net  curtains  at  the  broad,  clear-glassed  windows 
of  the  first  floor,  and  an  attempt  to  escape  from  the  stern 
drabness  of  the  older  type  of  New  York  houses  by  intro- 
ducing a  box-stoop  and  steps  with  a  carved  stone  balus- 
trade, at  the  top  of  which  perched  a  meek  old  lion  of  1890, 
with  battered  ears  and  a  truly  sensitive  stone  nose.  A 
typical  house  of  the  very  well-to-do  yet  not  wealthy 
"upper  middle  class";  a  house  predicating  one  motor-car, 
three  not  expensive  maids,  brief  European  tours,  and  the 
best  preparatory  schools  and  colleges  for  the  sons. 

A  maid  answered  the  door  and  took  his  card — a  maid 
in  a  frilly  apron  and  black  uniform — neither  a  butler  nor 
a  slatternly  Biddy.  In  the  hall,  as  the  maid  disappeared 
up-stairs,  Carl  had  an  impression  of  furnace  heat  and 
respectability.  Rather  shy,  uncomfortable,  anxious  to 
be  acceptable,  warning  himself  that  as  a  famous  aviator 
he  need  not  be  in  awe  of  any  one,  but  finding  that  the 
warning  did  not  completely  take,  he  drew  off  his  coat  and 
gloves  and,  after  a  swift  inspection  of  his  tie,  gazed  about 
with  more  curiosity  than  he  had  ever  given  to  any  other 
house. 

For  all  the  stone  lion  in  front,  this  was  quite  the  old- 
line  English-basement  house,  with  the  inevitable  front 

271 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

and  back  parlors — though  here  they  were  modified  into 
drawing-room  and  dining-room.  The  walls  of  the  hall 
were  decked  with  elaborate,  meaningless  scrolls  in  plaster 
bas-relief,  echoed  by  raised  circles  on  the  ceiling  just 
above  the  hanging  chandelier,  which  was  expensive  and 
hideous,  a  clutter  of  brass  and  knobby  red-and-blue  glass. 
The  floor  was  of  hardwood  in  squares,  dark  and  richly 
polished,  highly  self-respecting — a  floor  that  assumed 
civic  responsibility  from  a  republican  point  of  view,  and 
a  sound  conservative  business  established  since  1875  or 
1880.  By  the  door  was  a  huge  Japanese  vase,  convenient 
either  for  depositing  umbrellas  or  falling  over  in  the  dark. 
Then,  a  long  mirror  in  a  dull-red  mahogany  frame,  and  a 
table  of  mahogany  so  refined  that  no  one  would  ever 
dream  of  using  it  for  anything  more  useful  than  calling- 
cards.  It  might  have  been  the  table  by  the  king's  bed, 
on  which  he  leaves  his  crown  on  a  little  purple  cushion 
at  night.  Solid  and  ostentatious. 

The  drawing-room,  to  the  left,  was  dark  and  still  and 
unsympathetic  and  expensive;  a  vista  of  brocade-covered 
French-gilt  chairs  and  a  marquetry  table  and  a  table  of 
onyx  top,  on  which  was  one  book  bound  in  ooze  calf,  and 
one  vase;  cream-colored  heavy  carpet  and  a  crystal 
chandelier;  fairly  meretricious  paintings  of  rocks,  and 
thatched  cottages,  and  ragged  newsboys  with  faces  like 
Daniel  Webster,  all  of  them  in  large  gilt  frames  protected 
by  shadow-boxes.  In  a  corner  was  a  cabinet  of  gilt  and 
glass,  filled  with  Dresden-china  figurines  and  toy  tables 
and  a  carven  Swiss  musical  powder-box.  The  fireplace 
was  of  smooth,  chilly  white  marble,  with  an  ormulu  clock 
on  the  mantelpiece,  and  a  fire-screen  painted  with  Wat- 
teau  shepherds  and  shepherdesses,  making  silken  unreal 
love  and  scandalously  neglecting  silky  unreal  sheep.  By 
the  hearth  were  shiny  fire-irons  which  looked  as  though 
they  had  never  been  used.  The  whole  room  looked  as 
though  it  had  never  been  used — except  during  the  formal 
calls  of  overdressed  matrons  with  card-cases  and  prej- 

272 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

udices.  The  one  human  piece  of  furniture  in  the  room, 
a  couch  soft  and  slightly  worn,  on  which  lovers  might 
have  sat  and  small  boys  bounced,  was  trying  to  appear 
useless,  too,  under  its  row  of  stiff  satin  cushions  with 
gold  cords.  .  .  .  Well-dusted  chairs  on  which  no  one 
wished  to  sit;  expensive  fireplace  that  never  shone; 
prized  pictures  with  less  imagination  than  the  engravings 
on  a  bond — that  drawing-room  had  the  soul  of  a  banker 
with  side-whiskers. 

Carl  by  no  means  catalogued  all  the  details,  but  he 
did  get  the  effect  of  ingrowing  propriety.  It  is  not  cer- 
tain that  he  thought  the  room  in  bad  taste.  It  is  not 
certain  that  he  had  any  artistic  taste  whatever;  or  that 
his  attack  upon  the  pretensions  of  authors  had  been 
based  on  anything  more  fundamental  than  a  personal 
irritation  due  to  having  met  blatant  camp-followers  of 
the  arts.  And  it  is  certain  that  one  of  his  reactions  as 
he  surveyed  the  abject  respectability  of  that  room  was  a 
slight  awe  of  the  solidity  of  social  position  which  it  rep- 
resented, and  which  he  consciously  lacked.  But, 
whether  from  artistic  instinct  or  from  ignorance,  he  was 
sure  that  into  the  room  ought  to  blow  a  sudden  great 
wind,  with  the  scent  of  forest  and  snow.  He  shook  his 
head  when  the  maid  returned,  and  he  followed  her  up- 
stairs. Surely  a  girl  reared  here  would  never  run  away 
and  play  with  him. 

He  heard  lively  voices  from  the  library  above.  He 
entered  a  room  to  be  lived  in  and  be  happy  in,  with  a 
jolly  fire  on  the  hearth  and  friendly  people  on  a  big,  brown 
davenport.  Ruth  Winslow  smiled  at  him  from  behind 
the  Colonial  silver  and  thin  cups  on  the  tea-table,  and  as 
he  saw  her  light-filled  eyes,  saw  her  cock  her  head  gaily 
in  welcome,  he  was  again  convinced  that  he  had  found 
a  playmate. 

A  sensation  of  being  pleasantly  accepted  warmed  him 

as  she  cried,  "So  glad "  and  introduced  him,  gave 

him  tea  and  a  cake  with  nuts  in  it.  From  a  wing-chair 

273 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Carl  searched  the  room  and  the  people.  There  were  two 
paintings — a  pale  night  sea  and  an  arching  Japanese 
bridge  under  slanting  rain,  both  imaginative  and  well- 
done.  There  was  a  mahogany  escritoire,  which  might 
have  been  stiff  but  was  made  human  by  scattered  papers 
on  the  great  blotter  and  books  crammed  into  the  shelves. 
Other  books  were  heaped  on  a  table  as  though  people  had 
tbeen  reading  them.  Later  he  found  how  amazingly  they 
were  assorted — the  latest  novel  of  Robert  Chambers  be- 
side H.  G.  Wells's  First  and  Last  Things;  a  dusty  ex- 
pensive book  on  Italian  sculpture  near  a  cheap  reprint 
of  Dodo. 

The  chairs  were  capacious,  the  piano  a  workmanlike 
upright,  not  dominating  the  room,  but  ready  for  music; 
and  in  front  of  the  fire  was  an  English  setter,  an  aristo- 
crat of  a  dog,  with  the  light  glittering  in  his  slowly  wav- 
ing tail.  The  people  fitted  into  the  easy  life  of  the  room. 
They  were  New-Yorkers  and,  unlike  over  half  of  the 
population,  born  there>  considering  New  York  a  village 
where  one  knows  everybody  and  remembers  when  Four- 
teenth Street  was  the  shopping-center.  Olive  Dunleavy 
was  shinily  present,  her  ash-blond  hair  in  a  new  coiffure. 
She  was  arguing  with  a  man  of  tight  morning-clothes  and 
a  high-bred  face  about  the  merits  of  "Parsifal,"  which, 
Olive  declared,  no  one  ever  attended  except  as  a  matter 
of  conscience. 

"Now,  Georgie,"  she  said,  "issa  Georgie,  you  shall  have 
your  opera — and  you  shall  jolly  well  have  it  alone,  too!" 
Olive  was  vivid  about  it  all,  but  Carl  saw  that  she  was 
watching  him,  and  he  was  shy  as  he  wondered  what 
Ruth  had  told  her. 

Olive's  brother,  Philip  Dunleavy,  a  clear-faced,  slender, 
well-bathed  boy  of  twenty-six,  with  too  high  a  forehead, 
with  discontent  in  his  face  and  in  his  thin  voice,  carelessly 
well-dressed  in  a  soft-gray  suit  and  an  impressionistic  tie, 
was  also  inspecting  Carl,  while  talking  to  a  pretty,  com- 
monplace, finishing-school-finished  girl.  Carl  instantly 

274 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

disliked  Philip  Dunleavy,  and  was  afraid  of  his  latent 
sarcasm. 

Indeed,  Carl  felt  more  and  more  that  beneath  the 
friendliness  with  which  he  was  greeted  there  was  no  real 
welcome  as  yet,  save  possibly  on  the  part  of  Ruth.  He 
was  taken  on  trial.  He  was  a  Mr.  Ericson,  not  any  Mr. 
Ericson  in  particular. 

Ruth,  while  she  poured  tea,  was  laughing  with  a  man 
and  a  girl.  Carl  himself  was  part  of  a  hash-group — an 
older  woman  who  seemed  to  know  Rome  and  Paris  better 
than  New  York,  and  might  be  anything  from  a  milliner 
to  a  mondaine;  a  keen-looking  youngster  with  tortoise- 
shell  spectacles;  finally,  Ruth's  elder  brother,  Mason  J. 
Winslow,  Jr.,  a  tall,  thin,  solemn,  intensely  well-inten- 
tioned man  of  thirty-seven,  with  a  long,  clean-shaven  face, 
and  a  long,  narrow  head  whose  growing  baldness  was  al- 
ways spoken  of  as  a  result  of  his  hard  work.  Mason  J. 
Winslow,  Jr.,  spoke  hesitatingly,  worried  over  everything, 
and  stood  for  morality  and  good  business.  He  was 
rather  dull  in  conversation,  rather  kind  in  manner,  and 
accomplished  solid  things  by  unimaginatively  sticking  at 
them.  He  didn't  understand  people  who  did  not  belong 
to  a  good  club. 

Carl  contributed  a  few  careful  platitudes  to  a  frivolous 
discussion  of  whether  it  would  not  be  advisable  to  solve 
the  woman-suffrage  question  by  taking  the  vote  away 
from  men  and  women  both  and  conferring  it  on  children. 
Mason  Winslow  ambled  to  the  big  table  for  a  cigarette, 
and  Carl  pursued  him.  While  they  stood  talking  about 
"the  times  are  bad,"  Carl  was  spying  upon  Ruth,  and  the 
minute  her  current  group  wandered  off  to  the  davenport 
he  made  a  dash  at  the  tea-table  and  got  there  before 
Olive's  brother,  Philip  Dunleavy,  who  was  obviously 
manoeuvering  like  himself.  Philip  gave  him  a  covert 
"Who  are  you,  fellow?"  glance,  took  a  cake,  and  retired. 

From  his  wicker  chair  facing  Ruth's,  Carl  said,  gloom- 
ily, "It  isn't  done." 

2/5 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Yes,"  said  Ruth,  "I  know  it,  but  still  some  very 
smart  people  are  doing  it  this  season." 

"But  do  you  think  the  woman  that  writes  'What  the 
man  will  wear  '  in  the  theater  programs  would  stand  for 
it?" 

"Not,"  gravely  considered  Ruth,  "if  there  were  black 
stitching  on  the  dress-glove.  Yet  there  is  some  authority 
for  frilled  shirts." 

"You  think  it  might  be  considered  then?" 

"I  will  not  come  between  you  and  your  haberdasher, 
Mr.  Ericson." 

"This  is  a  foolish  conversation.  But  since  you  think 
the  better  classes  do  it — gee!  it's  getting  hard  for  me  to 
keep  up  this  kind  of  'Dolly  Dialogue/  What  I  wanted 
to  do  was  to  request  you  to  give  me  concisely  but  fully 
a  sketch  of  'Who  is  Miss  Ruth  Winslow?'  and  save  me 
from  making  any  pet  particular  breaks.  And  hereafter, 
I  warn  you,  I'm  going  to  talk  like  my  cousin,  the  carpet- 
slipper  model." 

"Name,  Ruth  Winslow.  Age,  between  twenty  and 
thirty.  Father,  Mason  Winslow,  manufacturing  con- 
tractor for  concrete.  Brothers,  Mason  Winslow,  Jr., 
whose  poor  dear  head  is  getting  somewhat  bald,  as  you 
observe,  and  Bobby  Winslow,  ne'er-do-weel,  who  is  en- 
gaged in  subverting  discipline  at  medical  school,  and  who 
dances  divinely.  My  mother  died  three  years  ago.  I 
do  nothing  useful,  but  I  play  a  good  game  of  bridge  and 
possess  a  voice  that  those  as  know  pronounce  passable. 
I  have  a  speaking  knowledge  of  French,  a  reading  knowl- 
edge of  German,  and  a  singing  knowledge  of  Italian.  I 
am  wearing  an  imported  gown,  for  which  the  House  of 
Winslow  will  probably  never  pay.  I  live  in  this  house, 
and  am  Episcopalian — not  so  much  High  Church  as 
highly  infrequent  church.  I  regard  the  drawing-room 
down-stairs  as  the  worst  example  of  late- Victorian  abomi- 
nations in  my  knowledge,  but  I  shall  probably  never  per- 
suade father  to  change  it  because  Mason  thinks  it  is 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

sacred  to  the  past.  My  ambition  in  life  is  to  be  catty 
to  the  Newport  set  after  I've  married  an  English  diplomat 
with  a  divine  mustache.  Never  having  met  such  a  per- 
sonage outside  of  Tatler  and  Vogue,  I  can't  give  you 
very  many  details  regarding  him.  Oh  yes,  of  course,  he'll 
have  to  play  a  marvelous  game  of  polo  and  have  a  chateau 
in  Provence  and  also  a  ranch  in  Texas,  where  I  shall  wear 
riding-breeches  and  live  next  to  Nature  and  have  a 
Chinese  cook  in  blue  silk.  I  think  that's  my  whole  his- 
tory. Oh,  I  forgot.  I  play  at  the  piano  and  am  very 
ignorant,  and  completely  immersed  in  the  worst  tradi- 
tions of  the  wealthy  Micks  of  the  Upper  West  Side,  and 
I  always  pretend  that  I  live  here  instead  of  on  the  Upper 
East  Side  because  'the  air  is  better."3 

"What  is  this  Upper  West  Side?  Is  it  a  state  of 
mind?" 

"Indeed  it  is  not.  It's  a  state  of  pocketbook.  The 
Upper  West  Side  is  composed  entirely  of  people  born  in 
New  York  who  want  to  be  in  society,  whatever  that  is, 
and  can't  afford  to  live  on  Fifth  Avenue.  You  know 
everybody  and  went  to  school  with  everybody  and  played 
in  the  Park  with  everybody,  and  mostly  your  papa  is  in 
wholesale  trade  and  haughty  about  people  in  retail.  You 
go  to  Europe  one  summer  and  to  the  Jersey  coast  the 
next.  All  your  clothes  and  parties  and  weddings  and 
funerals  might  be  described  as  'elegant/  That's  the 
Upper  West  Side.  Now  the  dread  truth  about  you.  .  .  . 
Do  you  know,  after  the  unscrupulous  way  in  which  you 
followed  up  a  mere  chance  introduction  at  a  tea  some- 
where, I  suspect  you  to  be  a  well-behaved  young  man 
who  leads  an  entirely  blameless  life.  Or  else  you'd  never 
dare  to  jump  the  fence  and  come  and  play  in  my  back 
yard  when  all  the  other  boys  politely  knock  at  the  front 
door  and  get  sent  home." 

"Me — well,  I'm  a  wage-slave  of  the  VanZile  Motor  peo- 
ple, in  charge  of  the  Touricar  department.  Age,  twenty- 
eight — almost.  Habits,  all  bad.  .  .  .  No,  I'll  tell  you.  I'm 

277 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

one  of  those  stern,  silent  men  of  granite  you  read  about, 
and  only  my  man  knows  the  human  side  of  me,  because 
all  the  guys  on  Wall  Street  tremble  in  me  presence." 

"Yes,  but  then  how  can  you  belong  to  the  Blue  Bowl 
Sodality?" 

"Urn,  yes I've  got  it.  You  must  have  read  novels 

in  which  the  stern,  silent  man  of  granite  has  a  secret  ten- 
derness in  his  heart,  and  he  keeps  the  band  of  the  first 
cigar  he  ever  smoked  in  a  little  safe  in  the  wall,  and  the 
first  dollar  he  ever  made  in  a  frame — that's  me." 

"Of  course!  The  cigar  was  given  him  by  his  flaxen- 
haired  sweetheart  back  in  Jenkins  Corners,  and  in  the 
last  chapter  he  goes  back  and  marries  her." 

"Not  always,  I  hope!"  Of  what  Carl  was  thinking  is 
not  recorded.  "Well,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I've  been  a 
fairly  industrious  young  man  of  granite  the  last  few 
months,  getting  out  the  Touricar." 

"What  is  a  Touricar?  It  sounds  like  an  island  in- 
habited by  cannibals,  exports  hemp  and  cocoanut,  see 
pink  dot  on  the  map,  nor'  by  nor'east  of  Mogador." 

Carl  explained. 

"I'm  terribly  interested,"  said  Ruth.  (But  she  made 
it  sound  as  though  she  really  was.)  "I  think  it's  so  won- 
derful. ...  I  want  to  go  off  tramping  through  the  Berk- 
shires.  I'm  so  tired  of  going  to  the  same  old  places." 

"Some  time,  when  you're  quite  sure  I'm  an  estimable 
young  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man,  I'm  going  to  try  to  persuade  you 
to  come  out  for  a  real  tramp." 

She  seemed  to  be  considering  the  idea,  not  seriously, 
but 

Philip  Dunleavy  eventuated. 

For  some  time  Philip  had  been  showing  signs  of  inter- 
est in  Ruth  and  Carl.  Now  he  sauntered  to  the  table, 
begged  for  another  cup  of  tea,  said  agreeable  things  in 
regard  to  putting  orange  marmalade  in  tea,  and  calmly 
established  himself.  Ruth  turned  toward  him. 

Carl  had  fancied  that  there  was,  for  himself,  in  Ruth's 

278 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

voice,  something  more  friendly,  in  her  infectious  smile 
something  more  intimate  than  she  had  given  the  others, 
but  when  she  turned  precisely  the  same  cheery  expres- 
sion upon  Philip,  Carl  seemed  to  have  lost  something 
which  he  had  trustingly  treasured  for  years.  He  was  the 
more  forlorn  as  Olive  Dunleavy  joined  them,  and  Ruth, 
Philip,  and  Olive  discussed  the  engagement  of  one  Mary 
Meldon.  Olive  recalled  Miss  Meldon  as  she  had  been  in 
school  days  at  the  Convent  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  Philip 
told  of  her  flirtations  at  the  old  Long  Beach  Hotel. 

The  names  of  New  York  people  whom  they  had  always 
known;  the  names  of  country  clubs — Baltusrol  and 
Meadow  Brook  and  Peace  Waters;  the  names  of  streets, 
with  a  sharp  differentiation  between  Seventy-fourth 
Street  and  Seventy-fifth  Street;  Durland's  Riding  Acad- 
emy, the  Rink  of  a  Monday  morning,  and  other  souve- 
nirs of  a  New  York  childhood;  the  score  of  the  last 
American  polo  team  and  the  coming  dances — these  things 
shut  Carl  out  as  definitely  as  though  he  were  a  foreigner. 
He  was  lonely.  He  disliked  Phil  Dunleavy' s  sarcastic 
references.  He  wanted  to  run  away. 

Ruth  seemed  to  realize  that  Carl  was  shut  out.  Said 
she  to  Phil  Dunleavy:  "I  wish  you  could  have  seen  Mr. 
Ericson  save  my  life  last  Sunday.  I  had  an  experience." 

"What  was  that?"  asked  the  man  whom  Olive  called 
"Georgie,"  joining  the  tea-table  set. 

The  whole  room  listened  as  Ruth  recounted  the  trip 
to  Chinatown,  Mrs.  Salisbury's  party,  and  the  hero  who 
had  once  been  a  passenger  in  an  aeroplane. 

Throughout  she  kept  turning  toward  Carl.  It  seemed 
to  reunite  him  to  the  company.  As  she  closed,  he  said: 

"The  thing  that  amused  me  about  the  parlor  aviator 
was  his  laying  down  the  law  that  the  Atlantic  will  be 
crossed  before  the  end  of  1913,  and  his  assumption  that 
we'll  all  have  aeroplanes  in  five  years.  I  know  from  my 
own  business,  the  automobile  business,  about  how  much 
such  prophecies  are  worth." 

279 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"  Don't  you  think  the  Atlantic  will  be  crossed  soon  ?" 
asked  the  keen-looking  man  with  the  tortoise-shell  spec- 
tacles. 

Phil  Dunleavy  broke  m  witn  an  air  of  amused  sophisti- 
cation: "I  think  the  parlor  aviator  was  right.  Really, 
you  know,  aviation  is  too  difficult  a  subject  for  the  lay- 
man to  make  any  predictions  about — either  what  it  can 
or  can't  do." 

"Oh  yes,"  admitted  Carl;  and  the  whole  room  breathed. 
"Oh  yes." 

Dunleavy  went  on  in  his  thin,  overbred,  insolent 
voice,  "Now  I  have  it  on  good  authority,  from  a  man 
who's  a  member  of  the  Aero  Club,  that  next  year  will  be 
the  greatest  year  aviation  has  ever  known,  and  that  the 
Wrights  have  an  aeroplane  up  their  sleeve  with  which 
they'll  cross  the  Atlantic  without  a  stop,  during  the  spring 
of  1914  at  the  very  latest." 

"That's  unfortunate,  because  the  aviation  game  has 
gone  up  completely  in  this  country,  except  for  hydro- 
aeroplaning  and  military  aviation,  and  possibly  it  never 
will  come  back,"  said  Carl,  a  hint  of  pique  in  his  voice. 

"What  is  your  authority  for  that?"  Phil  turned  a 
large,  bizarre  ring  round  on  his  slender  left  little  finger 
and  the  whole  room  waited,  testing  this  positive-spoken 
outsider. 

"Well,"  drawled  Carl,  "I  have  fairly  good  authority. 
Walter  MacMonnies,  for  instance,  and  he  is  probably 
the  best  flier  in  the  country  to-day,  except  for  Lincoln 
Beachey." 

"Oh  yes,  he's  a  good  flier,"  said  Phil,  contemptuously, 
with  a  shadowy  smile  for  Ruth.  "Still,  he's  no  better 
than  Aaron  Solomons,  and  he  isn't  half  so  great  a  flier 
as  that  chap  with  the  same  surname  as  your  own,  Hawk 
Ericson,  whom  I  myself  saw  coming  up  the  Jersey  coast 
when  he  won  that  big  race  to  New  York.  .  .  .  You  see,  I've 
been  following  this  aviation  pretty  closely." 

Carl  saw  Ruth's  head  drop  an  inch,  and  her  eyes  close 
280 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

to  a  slit  as  she  inspected  him  with  sudden  surprise.  He 
knew  that  it  had  just  occurred  to  her  who  he  was.  Their 
eyes  exchanged  understanding.  "She  does  get  things/' 
he  thought,  and  said,  lightly: 

"Well,  I  honestly  hate  to  take  the  money,  Mr.  Dun- 
leavy,  but  I'm  in  a  position  to  know  that  MacMonnies 
is  a  better  flier  to-day  than  Ericson  is,  be " 

"But  seehere- 

— because  I  happen  to  be  Hawk  Ericson." 

"What  a  chump  I  am!"  groaned  the  man  in  tortoise- 
shell  spectacles.  "Of  course!  I  remember  your  picture, 
now." 

Phil  was  open-mouthed.  Ruth  laughed.  The  rest  of 
the  room  gasped.  Mason  Winslow,  long  and  bald,  was 
worrying  over  the  question  of  How  to  Receive  Aviators 
at  Tea. 

And  Carl  was  shy  as  a  small  boy  caught  stealing  the 
jam. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

AT  home,  early  that  evening,  Carl's  doctor -landlord 
gave  him  the  message  that  a  Miss  Gertrude  Cowles 
had  called  him  up,  but  had  declined  to  leave  a  number. 
The  landlord's  look  indicated  that  it  was  no  fault  of  his 
if  Carl  had  friends  who  were  such  fools  that  they  didn't 
leave  their  numbers.  Carl  got  even  with  him  by  going 
out  to  the  corner  drug-store  to  telephone  Gertie,  instead 
of  giving  him  a  chance  to  listen. 

"Hello?"  said  Gertie  over  the  telephone.  "Oh,  hello, 
Carl;  I  just  called  up  to  tell  you  Adelaide  is  going  to  be 
here  this  evening,  and  I  thought  perhaps  you  might  like 
to  come  up  if  you  haven't  anything  better  to  do." 

Carl  did  have  something  better  to  do.  He  might  have 
used  the  whole  evening  in  being  psychological  about  Ruth 
and  Phil  Dunleavy  and  English-basement  houses  with 
cream-colored  drawing-rooms.  But  he  went  up  to 
Gertie's. 

They  were  all  there — Gertie  and  Adelaide,  Ray  and 
his  mother,  and  Miss  Greene,  an  unidentified  girl  from 
(Minneapolis;  all  playing  parcheesi,  explaining  that  they 
thought  it  not  quite  proper  to  play  cards  on  Sunday,  but 
that  parcheesi  was  "different."  Ray  winked  at  Carl  as 
they  said  it. 

The  general  atmosphere  was  easy  and  livable.  Carl 
found  himself  at  home  again.  Adelaide  told  funny  anec- 
dotes about  her  school  of  domestic  science,  and  the  chief 
teacher,  who  wore  her  hair  in  a  walnut  on  top  of  her  head 
and  interrupted  a  lecture  on  dietetics  to  chase  a  cock- 
roach with  a  ruler. 

282 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

As  the  others  began  to  disappear,  Gertie  said  to  Carl: 
"Don't  go  till  I  read  you  a  letter  from  Ben  Rusk  I  got 
yesterday.  Lots  of  news  from  home.  Joe  Jordan  is  en- 
gaged!" 

They  were  left  alone.  Gertie  glanced  at  him  intimately. 
He  stiffened.  He  knew  that  Gertie  was  honest,  kindly, 
with  enough  sense  of  display  to  catch  the  tricks  of  a  new 
environment.  But  to  her,  matrimony  would  be  the  in- 
evitable sequence  of  a  friendship  which  Ruth  or  Olive 
could  take  easily,  pleasantly,  for  its  own  sake.  And 
Carl,  the  young  man  just  starting  in  business,  was  un- 
heroically  afraid  of  matrimony. 

Yet  his  stiffness  of  attitude  disappeared  when  Gertie 
had  read  the  letter  from  Joralemon  and  mused,  chin  on 
hand,  dreamily  melancholy:  "I  can  just  see  them  out 
sleighing.  Sometimes  I  wish  I  was  out  there.  Honest, 
Carl,  for  all  the  sea  and  the  hills  here,  don't  you  wish 
sometimes  it  were  August,  and  you  were  out  home  camp- 
ing on  a  wooded  bluff  over  a  lake?" 

"Yes!"  he  cried.  "I've  been  away  so  long  now  that 
I  don't  ever  feel  homesick  for  any  particular  part 
of  the  country;  but  just  the  same  I  would  like  to 
see  the  lakes.  And  I  do  miss  the  prairies  sometimes. 
Oh,  I  was  reading  something  the  other  day — fellow  was 
trying  to  define  the  different  sorts  of  terrain — here  it 
is,  cut  it  out  of  the  paper."  He  produced  from  among 
a  bunch  of  pocket -worn  envelopes  and  memorandums 
a  clipping  hacked  from  a  newspaper  with  a  nail-file, 
and  read: 

"The  combat  and  mystery  of  the  sea;  the  uplift  of 
the  hills  and  their  promise  of  wonder  beyond;  the  kind- 
liness of  late  afternoon  nestling  in  small  fields,  or  on 
ample  barns  where  red  clover-tops  and  long  grasses  shine 
against  the  gray  foundation  stones  and  small  boys  seek 
for  hidden  entrances  to  this  castle  of  the  farm;  the  deep 
holiness  of  the  forest,  whose  leaves  are  the  stained  glass 
of  a  cathedral  to  grave  saints  of  the  open;  all  these  I 
19  283 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

love,  but  nowhere  do  I  find  content  save  on  the  mid- 
western  prairie,  where  the  light  of  sky  and  plain  drugs 
the  senses,  where  the  sound  of  meadow-larks  at  dawn 
fulfils  my  desire  for  companionship,  and  the  easy  creak 
of  the  buggy,  as  we  top  rise  after  rise,  bespells  me 
into  an  afternoon  slumber  which  the  nervous  town  shall 
never  know.' 

"I  cut  the  thing  out  because  I  was  thinking  that  the 
prairies,  stretching  out  the  way  they  do,  make  me  want 
to  go  on  and  on,  in  an  aeroplane  or  any  old  thing.  Lord, 
Lord!  I  guess  before  long  I'll  have  to  be  beating  it  again 
— like  the  guy  in  Kipling  that  always  got  sick  of  reading 
the  same  page  too  long." 

"Oh,  but  Carl,  you  don't  mean  to  say  you're  going  to 
give  up  your  business,  when  you're  doing  so  well?  And 
aviation  shows  what  you  can  do  if  you  stick  to  a  thing, 
Carl,  and  not  just  wander  around  like  you  used  to  do. 
We  do  want  to  see  you  succeed." 

His  reply  was  rather  weak:  "Well,  gee!  I  guess  I'll  suc- 
ceed, all  right,  but  I  don't  see  much  use  of  succeeding  if 
you  have  to  be  stuck  down  in  a  greasy  city  street  all 
your  life." 

"That's  very  true,  Carl,  but  do  you  appreciate  the 
city?  Have  you  ever  been  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum 
of  Art,  or  gone  to  a  single  symphony  concert  at  Carnegie 
Hall?" 

Carl  was  convinced  that  Gertie  was  a  highly  superior 
person;  that  she  was  getting  far  more  of  the  good  of  New 
York  than  he.  .  .  .  He  would  take  her  to  a  concert,  have 
her  explain  the  significance  of  the  music. 

It  was  never  to  occur  sharply  to  him  that,  though 
Gertie  referred  frequently  to  concerts  and  pictures,  she 
showed  no  vast  amount  of  knowledge  about  them.  She 
was  a  fixed  fact  in  his  mind;  had  been  for  twenty  years. 
He  could  have  a  surface  quarrel  with  her  because  he  knew 
the  fundamental  things  in  her,  and  with  these,  he  was  sure, 
no  one  could  quarrel.  His  thoughts  of  Ruth  and  Olive 

284 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

were  delightful  surprises;    his  impression  of  Gertie  was 
stable  as  the  Rockies. 

Carl  wasn't  sure  whether  Upper  West  Side  young 
ladies  could  be  persuaded  to  attend  a  theater  party  upon 
short  acquaintance,  but  he  tried,  and  arranged  a  party 
of  Ruth  and  Olive  and  himself,  Walter  MacMonnies  (in 
town  on  his  way  from  Africa  to  San  Diego),  Charley 
Forbes  of  the  Chronicle  and,  for  chaperon,  the  cosmopoli- 
tan woman  whom  he  had  met  at  Ruth's,  and  who  proved 
to  be  a  Mrs.  Tirrell,  a  dismayingly  smart  dressmaker. 

When  he  called  for  Ruth  he  expected  such  a  gay  girl 
as  had  poured  tea.  He  was  awed  to  find  her  a  grande 
dame  in  black  velvet,  more  dignified,  apparently  inches 
taller,  and  in  a  vice-regally  bad  temper.  As  they  drove 
off  she  declared: 

"Sorry  I'm  in  such  a  villainous  temper.  I  hadn't  a 
single  pair  of  decent  white  gloves,  and  I  tore  some  old 
black  Spanish  lace  on  the  gown  I  was  going  to  wear, 
and  my  entire  family,  whom  God  unquestionably  sent  to 
be  a  trial  to  test  me,  clustered  about  my  door  while  I 
was  dressing  and  bawled  in  queries  about  laundry  and 
other  horribly  vulgar  things." 

Carl  did  not  see  much  of  the  play.  He  was  watching 
Ruth's  eyes,  listening  to  her  whispered  comments.  She 
declared  that  she  was  awed  by  the  presence  of  two  avia- 
tors and  a  newspaper  man.  Actually,  she  was  work- 
ing, working  at  bringing  out  MacMonnies,  a  shy,  broad- 
shouldered,  inarticulate  youth  who  supposed  that  he 
never  had  to  talk. 

Carl  had  planned  to  go  to  the  Ritz  for  after-theater 
supper,  but  Ruth  and  Olive  persuaded  him  to  take  them 
to  the  cafe  of  the  Rector's  of  that  time;  for,  they  said, 
they  had  never  been  in  a  Broadway  cafe,  and  they  wanted 
to  see  the  fampus  actors  with  their  make-ups  off. 

At  the  table  Carl  carried  Ruth  off  in  talk,  like  a  young 
Lochinvar  out  of  the  Middle  West.  Around  them  was 

285 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

the  storm  of  highballs  and  brandy  and  club  soda,  the- 
atrical talk,  and  a  confused  mass  of  cigar-smoke,  shirt- 
fronts,  white  shoulders,  and  drab  waiters;  yet  here  was 
a  quiet  refuge  for  the  eternal  force  of  life.  .  .  . 

Carl  was  asking:  "Would  you  rather  be  a  perfect  lady 
and  have  blue  bowls  with  bunnies  on  them  for  your  very 
worst  dissipation,  or  be  like  your  mountain-climbing 
woman  and  have  anarchists  for  friends  one  day  and  be 
off  hiking  through  the  clouds  the  next?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  I  know  I'm  terribly  susceptible 
to  the  'nice  things  of  life/  but  I  do  get  tired  of  being 
nice.  Especially  when  I  have  a  bad  temper,  as  I  had 
to-night.  I'm  not  at  all  imprisoned  in  a  harem,  and  as 
for  social  aspirations,  I'm  a  nobody.  But  still  I  have 
been  brought  up  to  look  at  things  that  aren't  'like  the 
home  life  of  our  dear  Queen'  as  impossible,  and  I'm  quite 
sure  that  father  believes  that  poor  people  are  poor  be- 
cause they  are  silly  and  don't  try  to  be  rich.  But  I've 
been  reading;  and  I've  made — to  you  it  may  seem  silly 
to  call  it  a  discovery,  but  to  me  it's  the  greatest  discovery 
I've  ever  made:  that  people  are  just  people,  all  of  them — 
that  the  little  mousey  clerk  may  be  a  hero,  and  the  hero 
may  be  a  nobody — that  the  motorman  that  lets  his  beastly 
car  spatter  mud  on  my  nice  new  velvet  skirt  may  be 
exactly  the  same  sort  of  person  as  the  swain  who  com- 
miserates with  me  in  his  cunnin'  Harvard  accent.  Do 
you  think  that?" 

"I  know  it.  Most  of  my  life  I've  been  working  with 
men  with  dirty  finger-nails,  and  the  only  difference  be- 
tween them  and  the  men  with  clean  nails  is  a  nail-cleaner, 
and  that  costs  "just  ten  cents  at  the  corner  drug-store. 
Seriously — I  remember  a  cook  I  used  to  talk  to  on  my 
way  down  to  Panama  once — - — " 

("Panama!     How  I'd  like  to  go  there!") 

" and  he  had  as  much  culture  as  anybody  I've 

t." 

Yes,  but  generally  do  you  find  very  much — oh,  cour- 
286 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

tesy  and  that  sort  of  thing  among  mechanics,  as  much 
as  among  what  calls  itself  'the  better  class'?" 

"No,  I  don't." 

"You  don't  ?   Why,  I  thought — the  way  you  spoke " 

"Why,  blessed,  what  in  the  world  would  be  the  use  of 
their  trying  to  climb  if  they  already  had  all  the  rich  have  ? 
You  can't  be  as  gracious  as  the  man  that's  got  nothing 
else  to  do,  when  you're  about  one  jump  ahead  of  the 
steam-roller  every  second.  That's  why  they  ought  to 
take  things.  If  I  were  a  union  man,  I  wouldn't  trust 
all  these  writers  and  college  men  and  so  on,  that  try  to 
be  sympathetic.  Not  for  one  minute.  They  mean  well, 
but  they  can't  get  what  it  means  to  a  real  workman 
to  have  to  be  up  at  five  every  winter  morning,  with 
no  heat  in  the  furnished  housekeeping  room;  or  to 
have  to  see  his  Woman  sick  because  he  can't  afford 
a  doctor." 

So  they  talked,  boy  and  girl,  wondering  together  what 
the  world  really  is  like. 

"I  want  to  find  out  what  we  can  do  with  life!"  she  said. 
"Surely  it's  something  more  than  working  to  get  tired, 
and  then  resting  to  go  back  to  work.  But  I'm  confused 
about  things."  She  sighed.  "My  settlement  work — I 
went  into  it  because  I  was  bored.  But  it  did  make  me 
realize  how  many  people  are  hungry.  And  yet  we  just 
talk  and  talk  and  talk — Olive  and  I  sit  up  half  the  night 
when  she  comes  to  my  house,  and  when  we're  not  talking 
about  the  new  negligees  we're  making  and  the  gorgeous 
tea-gowns  we're  going  to  have  when  we're  married,  we 
rescue  the  poor  and  think  we're  dreadfully  advanced,  but 
does  it  do  any  good  to  just  talk? — Dear  me,  I  split  that 
poor  infinitive  right  down  his  middle." 

"I  don't  know.  But  I  do  know  I  don't  want  to  be 
just  stupidly  satisfied,  and  talking  does  keep  me  from 
that,  anyway.  See  here,  Miss  Winslow,  suppose  some 
time  I  suggested  that  we  become  nice  and  earnest  and  take 
up  socialism  and  single  tax  and  this — what  is  it? — oh, 

287 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

syndicalism — and  really  studied  them,  would  you  do  it? 
Make  each  other  study?" 

"Love  to." 

"Does  Dunleavy  think  much?" 

She  raised  her  eyebrows  a  bit,  but  hesitated.  "Oh  yes — 
no,  I  don't  suppose  he  does.  Or  anyway,  mostly  about 
the  violin.  He  played  a  lot  when  he  was  in  Yale." 

Thus  was  Carl  encouraged  to  be  fatuous,  and  he  said, 
in  a  manner  which  quite  dismissed  Phil  Dunleavy:  "I 
don't  believe  he's  very  deep.  Ra-ther  light,  I'd  say." 

Her  eyebrows  had  ascended  farther.  "Do  you  think 
so?  I'm  sorry." 

"Why  sorry?" 

"Oh,  he's  always  been  rather  a  friend  of  mine.  Olive 
and  Phil  and  I  roller-skated  together  at  the  age  of  eight." 

"But " 

"And  I  shall  probably — marry — Phil — some  day  be- 
fore long."  She  turned  abruptly  to  Charley  Forbes  with 
a  question. 

Lost,  already  lost,  was  the  playmate;  a  loss  that  dis- 
gusted him  with  life.  He  beat  his  spirit,  cursed  himself 
as  a  clumsy  mechanic.  He  listened  to  Olive  only  by  self- 
compulsion.  It  was  minutes  before  he  had  the  ability 
and  the  chance  to  say  to  Ruth: 

"Forgive  me — in  the  name  of  the  Blue  Bowl.  Mr. 
Dunleavy  was  rather  rude  to  me,  and  I've  been  just  as 
rude — and  to  you!  And  without  his  excuse.  For  he 
naturally  would  want  to  protect  you  from  a  wild  aviator 
coming  from  Lord  knows  where." 

"You  are  forgiven.  And  Phil  was  rude.  And  you're 
not  a  Lord-knows-where,  I'm  sure." 

Almost  brusquely  Carl  demanded:  "Come  for  a  long 
tramp  with  me,  on  the  Palisades.  Next  Saturday,  if  you 
can  and  if  it's  a  decent  day.  .  .  .  You  said  you  liked  to  run 
away.  .  .  .  And  we  can  be  back  before  dinner,  if  you  like." 

"Why — let  me  think  it  over.  Oh,  I  would  like  to. 
I've  always  wanted  to  do  just  that— think  of  it,  the 

288 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Palisades  just  opposite,  and  I  never  see  them  except  for 
a  walk  of  half  a  mile  or  so  when  I  stay  with  a  friend  of 
mine,  Laura  Needham,  at  Winklehurst,  up  on  the  Pali- 
sades. My  mother  never  approved  of  a  wilder  wilderness 

than  Central  Park  and  the  habit I've  never  been 

able  to  get  Olive  to  explore.  But  it  isn't  conventional  to 
go  on  long  tramps  with  even  the  nicest  new  Johnnies, 
is  it?" 

"No,  but " 

"I  know.  You'll  say,  'Who  makes  the  convention?' 
and  of  course  there's  no  answer  but  'They/  But  They 

are  so  all-present.  They Oh  yes,  yes,  yes,  I  will 

go!  But  you  will  let  me  get  back  by  dinner-time,  won't 
you?  Will  you  call  for  me  about  two?  .  .  .  And  can 

you I  wonder  if  a  hawk  out  of  the  windy  skies  can 

understand  how  daring  a  dove  out  of  Ninety-second 
Street  feels  at  going  walking  on  the  Palisades?" 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  iron  Hudson  flowed  sullenly,  far  below  the  ice- 
enameled  rock  on  the  Palisades,  where  stood  Ruth 
and  Carl,  shivering  in  the  abrupt  wind  that  cut  down  the 
defile.  The  scowling,  slatey  river  was  filled  with  ice- 
floes and  chunks  of  floating,  wrater-drenched  snow  that 
broke  up  into  bobbing  sheets  of  slush.  The  sky  was 
solid  cold  gray,  with  no  arch  and  no  hint  of  the  lost  sun. 
Crows  winging  above  them  stood  out  against  the  sky  like 
pencil-marks  on  clean  paper.  The  estates  in  upper  New 
York  City,  across  the  river,  were  snow-cloaked,  the  trees 
chilly  and  naked,  the  houses  standing  out  as  though  they 
were  freezing  and  longing  for  their  summer  wrap  of  ivy. 
And  naked  were  the  rattling  trees  on  their  side  of  the 
river,  on  the  Palisades.  But  the  cold  breeze  enlivened 
them,  the  sternness  of  the  swift,  cruel  river  and  miles  of 
brown  shore  made  them  gravely  happy.  As  they  tramped 
briskly  off,  atop  the  cliffs,  toward  the  ferry  to  New  York, 
five  miles  away,  they  talked  with  a  quiet,  quick  serious- 
ness which  discovered  them  to  each  other.  It  was  too 
cold  for  conversational  fencing.  It  was  too  splendidly 
open  for  them  not  to  rejoice  in  the  freedom  from  New 
York  streets  and  feel  like  heroes  conquering  the  miles. 
Carl  was  telling  of  Joralemon,  of  Plato,  of  his  first 
flights  before  country  fairs;  something  of  what  it  meant 
to  be  a  newspaper  hero,  arid  of  his  loneliness  as  a  Dethroned 
Prince.  Ruth  dropped  her  defenses  of  a  chaperoned 
young  woman;  confessed  that  now  that  she  had  no  mother 
to  keep  her  mobilized  and  in  the  campaign  to  get  nearer 
to  "Society"  and  a  "decent  marriage,"  she  did  not  know 

290 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

exactly  what  she  wanted  to  do  with  life.  She  spoke  ten- 
tatively of  her  vague  settlement  work;  in  all  she  said  she 
revealed  an  honesty  as  forthright  as  though  she  were  a 
gaunt-eyed  fanatic  instead  of  a  lively-voiced  girl  in  a 
blue  corduroy  jacket  with  collar  and  cuffs  of  civet  and 
buttons  from  Venice. 

Then  Carl  spoke  of  his  religion — the  memory  of  For- 
rest Haviland.  He  had  never  really  talked  of  him  to 
any  one  save  Colonel  Haviland  and  Titherington,  the 
English  aviator;  but  now  this  girl,  who  had  never  seen 
Forrest,  seemed  to  have  known  him  for  life.  Carl  made 
vivid  by  his  earnestness  the  golden  hours  of  work  together 
in  California;  the  confidences  in  New  York  restaurants; 
his  long  passion  for  their  Brazilian  trip.  Ruth's  eyes 
looked  up  at  him  with  swift  comprehension,  and  there 
was  a  tear  in  them  as  he  told  in  ten  words  of  the  message 
that  Forrest  was  dead. 

They  turned  gay,  Ruth's  sturdy,  charming  shoulders 
shrugging  like  a  Frenchman's  with  the  exhilaration  of  fast 
walking  and  keen  air,  while  her  voice,  light  and  cheerful, 
with  graceful  modulations  and  the  singer's  freedom  from 
twang,  rejoiced: 

"I'm  so  glad  we  came!  I'm  so  glad  we  came!  But 
I'm  afraid  of  the  wild  beasts  I  see  in  the  woods  there. 
They  have  no  right  to  have  twilight  so  early.  I  know 
a  big  newspaper  man  who  lives  at  Pompton,  N.  J.,  and 
I'm  going  to  ask  him  to  write  to  the  governor  about 
it.  The  legislature  ought  to  pass  a  law  that  dusk  sha'n't 
come  till  seven,  Saturday  afternoons.  Do  you  know  how 
glad  I  am  that  you  made  me  come  ?  .  .  .  And  how  honored 
I  am  to  have  you  tell  me — Lieutenant  Haviland — and  the 
very  bad  Carl  that  lived  in  Joralemon?" 

"It's—  I'm  glad Say,  gee!  we'll  have  to 

hurry  like  the  dickens  if  we're  going  to  catch  a  ferry  in 
time  to  get  you  home  for  dinner." 

"I  have  an  idea.  I  wonder  if  we  dare I  have  a 

friend,  sort  of  a  distant  cousin,  who  married  her  a  hus- 

291 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

band  at  Winklehurst,  on  the  Palisades,  not  very  far  from 
the  ferry.  I  wonder  if  we  couldn't  make  her  invite  us  both 
for  dinner?  Of  course,  she'll  want  to  know  all  about 
you;  but  we'll  be  mysterious,  and  that  will  make  it  all 
the  more  fun,  don't  you  think  ?  I  do  want  to  prolong  our 
jaunt,  you  see." 

"I  can't  think  of  anything  I'd  rather  do.  But  do  you 
dare  impose  a  perfectly  strange  man  on  her?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  know  her  so  well  that  she's  told  me  what 
kind  of  a  tie  her  husband  had  on  when  he  proposed." 

"Let's  do  it!" 

"A  telephone!  There's  some  shops  ahead  there,  in 
that  settlement.  Ought  to  be  a  telephone  there.  .  .  .  I'll 
make  her  give  us  a  good  dinner!  If  Laura  thinks  she'll 
get  away  with  hash  and  a  custard  with  a  red  cherry  in  it, 
she'd  better  undeceive  herself." 

They  entered  a  tiny  wayside  shop  for  the  sale  of  candy 
and  padlocks  and  mittens.  While  Ruth  telephoned  to 
her  friend,  Mrs.  Laura  Needham,  Carl  bought  red-and- 
blue  and  lemon-colored  all-day  suckers,  and  a  sugar 
mouse,  and  a  candy  kitten  with  green  ears  and  real 
whiskers.  He  could  not  but  hear  Ruth  telephoning,  and 
they  grinned  at  each  other  like  conspirators,  her  eyelids 
in  little  wrinkles  as  she  tried  to  look  wicked,  her  voice 
amazingly  innocent  as  she  talked,  Carl  carefully  arraying 
his  purchases  before  her,  making  the  candy  kitten  pur- 
sue the  sugar  mouse  round  and  round  the  telephone. 

"Hello,  hello!  Is  Mrs.  Needham  there?  .  .  .  Hello! 
.  .  .  Oh,  hel-/o,  Laura  dear.  This  is  Ruth.  I.  ...  Fine. 
I  feel  fine.  But  chillery.  Listen,  Laura;  I've  been 
taking  a  tramp  along  the  Palisades.  Am  I  invited  to 
dinner  with  a  swain  ? .  .  .  What  ? . . .  Oh  yes,  I  am;  certainly 
I'm  invited  to  dinner.  .  .  .  Well,  my  dear,  go  in  town 
by  all  means,  with  my  blessing;  but  that  sha'n't  prevent 
you  from  having  the  opportunity  to  enjoy  being  hospitable. 
...  I  don't  know.  What  ferry  do  you  catch? .  .  .The  7.20? 
.  .  .  N-no,  I  don't  think  we  can  get  there  till  after  that, 

292 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

so  you  can  go  right  ahead  and  have  the  Biddy  get  ready 
for  us.  ...  All  right;  that  is  good  of  you,  dear,  to  force 
the  invitation  on  me."  She  flushed  as  her  eyes  met  Carl's. 
She  continued:  "But  seriously,  will  it  be  too  much  of  a 
tax  on  the  Biddy  if  we  do  come?  We're  drefFul  cold, 
and  it's  a  long  crool  way  to  town.  .  .  .  Thank  you,  dear. 
It  shall  be  returned  unto  you — after  not  too  many  days. 

.  .  .  What?  .  .  .  Who?  ...  Oh,  a  man Why,  yes,  it 

might  be,  but  I'd  be  twice  as  likely  to  go  tramping  with 
Olive  as  with  Phil.  .  .  .  No,  it  isn't.  .  .  .  Oh,  as  usual. 
He's  getting  to  be  quite  a  dancing-man.  .  .  .  Well,  if  you 

must  know — oh,  I  can't  give  you  his  name.  He's " 

She  glanced  at  Carl  appraisingly.  " -he's  about  five 

feet  tall,  and  he  has  a  long  French  shovel  beard  and  a 
lovely  red  nose,  and  he's  listening  to  me  describe  him!" 

Carl  made  the  kitten  chase  the  mouse  furiously. 

"  Perhaps  I'll  tell  you  about  him  some  time.  .  .  .  Good- 
by,  Laura  dear." 

She  turned  to  Carl,  rubbing  her  cold  ear  where  the 
telephone-receiver  had  pressed  against  it,  and  caroled: 
"Her  husband  is  held  late  at  the  office,  and  Laura  is  going 
to  meet  him  in  town,  and  they're  going  to  the  theater. 
So  we'll  have  the  house  all  to  ourselves.  Exciting!" 
She  swung  round  to  telephone  home  that  she  would  not 
be  there  for  dinner. 

As  they  left  the  shop,  went  over  a  couple  of  blocks  for  the 
Winklehurst  trolley,  and  boarded  it,  Carl  did  some  swift 
thinking.  He  was  not  above  flirting  or,  if  the  opportunity 
offered,  carrying  the  flirtation  to  the  most  delicious,  ex- 
citing, uncertain  lengths  he  could.  Here,  with  "dinner 
in  their  own  house,"  with  a  girl  interesting  yet  unknown, 
there  was  a  feeling  of  sudden  intimacy  which  might  mean 
anything.  Only — when  their  joined  eyes  had  pledged 
mischief  while  she  telephoned,  she  had  been  so  quiet,  so 
frank,  so  evidently  free  from  a  shamefaced  erotic  curios- 
ity, that  now  he  instantly  dismissed  the  query,  "How  far 
could  I  go?  What  does  she  expect?"  which,  outside  of 

293 


THE  TRAIL  OF  THE   HAWK 

pure-minded  romances,  really  does  come  to  men.  It  was 
a  wonderful  relief  to  dismiss  the  query;  a  simplification 
to  live  in  the  joy  each  moment  gave  of  itself.  The  hour 
was  like  a  poem.  Yet  he  was  no  extraordinary  person; 
he  had,  in  the  lonely  hours  of  a  dead  room,  been  tortured 
with  the  unmoral  longings  which,  good  or  bad,  men  do  feel. 

As  they  took  their  seats  in  the  car,  and  Ruth  beat  on 
her  knees  with  her  fur-lined  gloves,  he  laughed  back, 
altogether  happy,  not  pretending,  as  he  had  pretended 
with  Eve  L'Ewysse. 

Happy.     But  hungry! 

Mrs.  Needham  should  have  been  graciously  absent  by 
the  time  they  reached  her  house — a  suburban  residence 
with  a  large  porch.  But,  as  they  approached,  Ruth  cried: 

"'Shhhh!  There  seems  to  be  somebody  moving  around 
in  the  living-room.  I  don't  believe  Laura  5s  gone  yet. 
That  would  spoil  it.  Come  on.  Let's  peep.  Let's  be 
Indian  scouts!" 

Cautioning  each  other  with  warning  pats,  they  tip- 
toed guiltily  to  the  side  of  the  house  and  peered  in  at  the 
dining-room  window,  where  the  shade  was  raised  a  couple 
of  inches  above  the  sill.  A  noise  at  the  back  of  the  house 
made  them  start  and  flatten  against  the  wall. 

"Big  chief,"  whispered  Carl,  "the  redskins  are  upon 
us!  But  old  Brown  Barrel  shall  make  many  an  one  bite 
the  dust!" 

"Hush,  silly.  .  .  .  Oh,  it's  just  the  maid.  See,  she's 
looking  at  the  clock  and  wondering  why  we  don't  get 
here." 

"But  maybe  Mrs.  Needham  's  in  the  other  room." 

"No.  Because  the  maid's  sniffing  around — there,  she's 
reading  a  post-card  some  one  left  on  the  side-table.  Oh 
yes,  and  she's  chewing  gum.  Laura  has  certainly  de- 
parted. Probably  Laura  is  chewing  gum  herself  at  the 
present  moment,  now  that  she's  out  from  under  the  eye 
of  her  maid.  Laura  always  was  ree-fined,  but  I  wouldn't 
trust  her  to  be  proof  against  the  feeling  of  wild  dissipa- 

294 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

tion  you  can  get  out  of  chewing  gum,  if  you  live  in  Winkle- 
hurst." 

They  had  rung  the  door-bell  on  the  porch  by  now. 

"I'm  so  glad,"  said  Ruth,  "that  Laura  is  gone.  She 
is  very  literal-minded.  She  might  not  understand  that 
we  could  be  hastily  married  and  even  lease  a  house,  this 
way,  and  still  be  only  tea  acquaintances." 

The  maid  had  not  yet  answered.  Waiting  in  the  still 
porch,  winter  everywhere  beyond  it,  Carl  was  all  ex- 
cited anticipation.  He  hastily  pressed  her  hand,  and  she 
lightly  returned  the  pressure,  laughing,  breathing  quickly. 
They  started  like  convicted  lovers  as  the  maid  opened 
the  door.  The  consciousness  of  their  starting  made  them 
the  more  embarrassed,  and  they  stammered  before  the 
maid.  Ruth  fled  up-stairs,  while  Carl  tried  to  walk  up 
gravely,  though  he  was  tingling  with  the  game. 

When  he  had  washed  (discovering,  as  every  one  newly 
discovers  after  every  long,  chilly  walk,  that  water  from 
the  cold  tap  feels  amazingly  warm  on  hands  congealed 
by  the  tramp),  and  was  loitering  in  the  upper  hall,  Ruth 
called  to  him  from  Mrs.  Needham's  room: 

"I  think  you'll  find  hair-brushes  and  things  in  Jack's 
room,  to  the  right.  Oh,  I  am  very  stupid;  I  forgot  this 
was  our  house;  I  mean  in  your  room,  of  course." 

He  had  a  glimpse  of  her,  twisting  up  a  strand  of  natu- 
rally wavy  brown  hair,  a  silver-backed  hair-brush  bright 
against  it,  her  cheeks  flushed  to  an  even  crimson,  her  blue 
corduroy  jacket  off,  and,  warmly  intimate  in  its  stead,  a 
blouse  of  blue  satin,  opening  in  a  shallow  triangle  at  her 
throat.  With  a  tender  big-brotherliness  he  sought  the 
room  that  was  his,  not  Jack's.  No  longer  was  this  the 
house  of  Other  People,  but  one  in  which  he  belonged. 

"No,"  he  heard  himself  explain,  "she  isn't  beautiful. 
Istra  Nash  was  nearer  that.  But,  golly!  she  is  such  a 
good  pal,  and  she  is  beautiful  if  an  English  lane  is.  Oh, 
stop  rambling.  ...  If  I  could  kiss  that  little  honey  place 
at  the  base  of  her  throat.  .  .  ." 

295 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Yes,  Miss  Winslow.  Coming.  Am  I  ready  for  din- 
ner? Watch  me!" 

She  confided  as  he  came  out  into  the  hall,  "Isn't  it  ter- 
ribly confusing  to  have  our  home  and  even  three  toby- 
children  all  ready-made  for  us,  this  way!" 

Her  glance — eyes  that  always  startled  him  with  blue 
where  dark-brown  was  expected;  even  teeth  showing; 
head  cocked  sidelong;  cheeks  burning  with  fire  of  Decem- 
ber snow — her  glance  and  all  her  manner  trusted  him, 
the  outlaw.  It  was  not  as  an  outsider,  but  as  her  comrade 
that  he  answered: 

"Golly!  have  we  a  family,  too?  I  always  forget.  So 
sorry.  But  you  know — get  so  busy  at  the  office " 

"Why,  I  think  we  have  one.  I'll  go  look  in  the  nursery 
and  make  sure,  but  I'm  almost  positive *-" 

"No,  I'll  take  your  word  for  it.  You're  around  the 
house  more  than  I  am.  .  .  .  But,  oh,  say,  speaking  of  that, 
that  reminds  me:  Woman,  if  you  think  that  I'm  going 
to  buy  you  a  washing-machine  this  year,  when  I've  already 
bought  you  a  napkin-ring  and  a  portrait  of  Martha  Wash- 
ington  " 

"Oh  weh!  I  knew  I  should  have  a  cruel  husband 

who Joy!  I  think  the  maid  is  prowling  about  and 

trying  to  listen.  'Shhh!  The  story  Laura  will  get  out 
of  her!" 

While  the  maid  served  dinner,  there  could  scarce  have 
been  a  more  severely  correct  pair,  though  Carl  did  step 
on  her  toe  when  she  was  saying  to  the  maid,  in  her  best 
offhand  manner,  "Oh,  Leah,  will  you  please  tell  Mrs. 
Needham  that  I  stole  a  handkerchief  from  my — I  mean 
from  her  room?" 

But  when  the  maid  had  been  unable  to  find  any  more 
imaginary  crumbs  to  brush  off  the  table,  and  had  left  them 
alone  with  their  hearts  and  the  dessert,  a  most  rowdy 
young  "married  couple"  quarreled  violently  over  the 
washing-machine  he  still  refused  to  buy  for  her. 

Carl  insisted  that,  as  suburbanites,  they  had  to  play 
296 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

cards,  and  he  taught  her  pinochle,  which  he  had  learned 
from  the  bartender  of  the  Bowery  saloon.  But  the  cards 
dropped  from  their  fingers,  and  they  sat  before  the  gas- 
log  in  the  living-room,  in  a  lazy,  perfect  happiness,  when 
she  said: 

"All  the  while  we've  been  playing  cards — and  playing 
the  still  more  dangerous  game  of  being  married — I've 
been  thinking  how  glad  I  am  to  know  about  your  life. 
Somehow •  I  wonder  if  you  have  told  so  very  many?" 

"Practically  no  one." 

"I   do Fm   really  not   fishing   for   compliments, 

but  I  do  want  to  be  found  understanding 

"There's  never  been  any  one  so  understanding." 

Silent  then.  Carl  glanced  about  the  modern  room. 
Ruth's  eyes  followed.  She  nodded  as  he  said: 

"  But  it's  really  an  old  farm-house  out  in  the  hills  where 
the  snow  is  deep;  and  there's  logs  in  the  fireplace." 

"Yes,  and  rag  carpets." 

"And,  oh,  Ruth,  listen,  a  bob-sled  with Golly!  I 

suppose  it  is  a  little  premature  to  call  you  'Ruth,'  but 
after  our  being  married  all  evening  I  don't  see  how  I 
can  call  you  'Miss  Winslow.'" 

"No,  I'm  afraid  it  would  scarcely  be  proper,  under  the 
circumstances.  Then  I  must  be  'Mrs.  Ericson.'  Ooh! 
It  makes  me  think  of  Norse  galleys  and  northern  seas. 
Of  course — your  galley  was  the  aeroplane.  .  .  .  'Mrs. 

Eric '"     Her  voice  ran  down;    she  flushed  and  said, 

defensively:  "What  time  is  it?  I  think  we  must  be 
starting.  I  telephoned  I  would  be  home  by  ten."  Her 
tone  was  conventional  as  her  words. 

But  as  they  stood  waiting  for  a  trolley-car  to  the  New 
York  ferry,  on  a  street  corner  transformed  by  an  arc- 
light  that  swung  in  the  wind  and  cast  wavering  films  of 
radiance  among  the  vague  wintry  trees  of  a  wood-lot, 
Ruth  tucked  her  arm  under  his,  small  beside  his  great 
ulster,  and  sighed  like  a  child: 

"I  am  ver-ee  cold!" 

297 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

He  rubbed  her  hand  protectingly,  her  mouselike  hand 
in  its  fur-lined  glove.  His  canny,  self-defensive,  Scotch- 
like  Norse  soul  opened  its  gates.  He  knew  a  longing  to 
give,  a  passion  to  protect  her,  a  whelming  desire  to  have 
shy  secrets  with  this  slim  girl.  All  the  poetry  in  the  world 
sounded  its  silver  harps  within  him  because  his  eyes  were 
opened  and  it  was  given  to  him  to  see  her  face.  Gently 
he  said: 

"Yes,  it's  cold,  and  there's  big  gray  ghosts  hiding  there 
in  the  trees,  with  their  leathery  wings,  that  were  made  out 
of  sea-fog  by  the  witches,  folded  in  front  of  them,  and 
they're  glumming  at  us  over  the  bony,  knobly  joints  on 
top  their  wings,  with  big,  round  platter  eyes.  And  the 
wind  is  calling  us — it's  trying  to  snatch  us  out  on  the 
arctic  snow-fields,  to  freeze  us.  But  I'll  fight  them  all 
off.  I  won't  let  them  take  you,  Ruth." 

"I'm  sure  you  won't,  Carl." 

"And — oh — you  won't  kt  Phil  Dunleavy  keep  you 
from  running  away,  not  for  a  while  yet?" 

"M-maybe  not." 

The  sky  had  cleared.  She  tilted  up  her  chin  and  adored 
the  stars — stars  like  the  hard,  cold,  fighting  sparks  that 
fly  from  a  trolley-wire.  Carl  looked  down  fondly,  noting 
how  fair-skinned  was  her  forehead  in  contrast  to  her 
thick,  dark  brows,  as  the  arc-light's  brilliance  rested 
on  her  worshiping  face — her  lips  a-tremble  and  slightly 
parted.  She  raised  her  arms,  her  fingers  wide-spread, 

praising  the  star-gods.  She  cried  only,  "Oh,  all  this " 

but  it  was  a  prayer  to  a  greater  god  Pan,  shaking  his  snow- 
incrusted  beard  to  the  roar  of  northern  music.  To  Carl 
her  cry  seemed  to  pledge  faith  in  the  starred  sky  and  the 
long  trail  and  a  glorious  restlessness  that  by  a  dead  fire- 
place of  white,  smooth  marble  would  never  find  content. 

"Like  sword-points,  those  stars  are,"  he  said,  then 

Then  they  heard  the  trolley-car's  flat  wheels  grinding 
on  a  curve.  Its  search-light  changed  the  shadow-haunted 
woodland  to  a  sad  group  of  scanty  trees,  huddling  in  front 

298 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

of  an  old  bill-board,  with  its  top  broken  and  the  tattered 
posters  flapping.  The  wanderers  stepped  from  the 
mystical  romance  of  the  open  night  into  the  exceeding 
realism  of  the  car — highly  realistic  wooden  floor  with 
small,  muddy  pools  from  lumps  of  dirty  melting  snow, 
hot  air,  a  smell  of  Italian  workmen,  a  German  conductor 
with  the  sniffles,  a  row  of  shoes  mostly  wet  and  all  wrinkled. 
They  had  to  stand.  Most  realistic  of  all,  they  read  the 
glossy  car-signs  advertising  soap  and  little  cigars,  and  the 
enterprising  local  advertisement  of  "Wm.  P.  Smith  & 
Sons,  All  Northern  New  Jersey  Real  Estate,  Cheaper 
Than  Rent."  So,  instantly,  the  children  of  the  night 
turned  into  two  sophisticated  young  New-Yorkers  who, 
apologizing  for  fresh-air  yawns,  talked  of  the  theatrical 
season. 

But  for  a  moment  a  strange  look  of  distance  dwelt  in 
Ruth's  eyes,  and  she  said:  "I  wonder  what  I  can  do  with 
the  winter  stars  we've  found  ?    Will  Ninety-second  Street 
be  big  enough  for  them?" 
20 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

FOR  a  week— the  week  before  Christmas — Carl  had 
seen  neither  Ruth  nor  Gertie;  but  of  the  office  he 
had  seen  too  much.  They  were  "rushing  work"  on  the 
Touricar  to  have  it  on  the  market  early  in  1913.  Every 
afternoon  or  evening  he  left  the  office  with  his  tongue 
scaly  from  too  much  nervous  smoking;  poked  dully  about 
the  streets,  not  much  desiring  to  go  any  place,  nor 
to  watch  the  crowds,  after  all  the  curiosity  had  been 
drawn  out  of  him  by  hours  of  work.  Several  times  he 
went  to  a  super-movie,  a  cinema  palace  on  Broadway 
above  Seventy-second  Street,  with  an  entrance  in  New 
York  Colonial  architecture,  and  crowds  of  well-to-do 
Jewish  girls  in  opera-cloaks. 

On  the  two  bright  mornings  of  the  week  he  wanted  to 
play  truant  from  the  office,  to  be  off  with  Ruth  over  the 
hills  and  far  away.  Both  mornings  there  came  to  him 
a  picture  of  Gertie,  wanting  to  slip  out  and  play  like  Ruth, 
but  having  no  chance.  He  felt  guilty  because  he  had 
never  bidden  Gertie  come  tramping,  and  guiltily  he  re- 
called that  it  was  with  her  that  the  boy  Carl  had  gone  to 
seek-our-fortunes.  He  told  himself  that  he  had  been  de- 
pending upon  Gertie  for  the  bread-and-butter  of  friend- 
ship, and  begging  for  the  opportunity  to  give  the  stranger, 
Ruth  Winslow,  dainties  of  which  she  already  had  too 
much. 

When  he  called,  Sunday  evening,  he  found  Gertie  alone, 
reading  a  love-story  in  a  woman's  magazine. 

"I'm  so  glad  you  came,"  she  said.  "I  was  getting 
quite  lonely."  She  was  as  gratefully  casual  as  ever. 

300 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Say,  Gertie,  I've  got  a  plan.  Wouldn't  you  like  to 
go  for  some  good  long  hikes  in  the  country?" 

"Oh  yes;   that  would  be  fine  when  spring  comes." 

"No;   I  mean  now,  in  the  winter." 

She  looked  at  him  heavily.  "Why,  isn't  it  pretty  cold, 
don't  you  think?" 

He  prepared  to  argue,  but  he  did  not  think  of  her  as 
looking  heavily.  He  did  not  draw  swift  comparisons 
between  Gertie's  immobility  and  Ruth's  lightness.  He 
was  used  to  Gertie;  was  in  her  presence  comfortably 
understanding  and  understood;  could  find  whatever  he 
expected  in  her  as  easily  as  one  finds  the  editorial  page — 
or  the  sporting  page — in  a  familiar  newspaper.  He  merely 
became  mildly  contentious  and  made  questioning  noises 
in  his  throat  as  she  went  on: 

"You  know  it  is  pretty  cold  here.  They  can  say  all 
they  want  to  about  the  cold  and  all  that  out  in  Minne- 
sota, but,  really,  the  humidity " 

"Rats;  it  isn't  so  very  cold,  not  if  you  walk  fast." 

"Well,  maybe;  anyway,  I  guess  it  would  be  nice  to 
explore  some." 

"All  right;  let's." 

"I  do  think  people  are  so  conventional.  Don't  you?" 
said  Gertie,  while  Carl  discerningly  stole  one  of  Ray's 
best  cigars  out  of  the  humidor.  "Awfully  conventional. 
Not  going  out  for  good  long  walks.  Dorothy  Gibbons 
and  I  did  find  the  nicest  place  to  walk,  up  in  Bronx  Park, 
and  there's  such  a  dear  little  restaurant,  right  on  the 
water;  of  course  the  water  was  frozen,  but  it  seemed 
quite  wild,  you  know,  for  New  York.  We  might  take 
that  walk,  whenever  you'd  like  to." 

"Oh — Bronx  Park — gee!  Gertie,  I  can't  get  up  much 
excitement  over  that.  I  want  to  get  away  from  this  tame 
city,  and  forget  all  about  offices  and  parks  and  people  and 
everything  like  that." 

"N-n-n-now!"  she  clucked  in  a  patronizing  way. 
"We  mustn't  ask  New  York  to  give  us  wilderness,  you 

301 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

know!     Fm  afraid  that  would  be  a  little  too  much  to  ask 
of  it!     Don't  you  think  so  yourself!" 

Carl  groaned  to  himself,  "I  won't  be  mothered!" 

He  was  silent.  His  silence  was  positively  noisy.  He 
wanted  her  to  hear  it.  But  it  is  difficult  to  be  sulky  with 
a  bland,  plump  woman  of  thirty  who  remembers  your 
childhood  trick  of  biting  your  nails,  and  glances  up  at 
you  from  her  embroidery,  occasionally  patting  her  brown 
silk  hair  or  smoothing  her  brown  silk  waist  in  a  way  which 
implies  a  good  digestion,  a  perfect  memory  of  the  morn- 
ing's lesson  of  her  Sunday-school  class,  and  a  mild  dis- 
belief in  men  as  anything  except  relatives,  providers,  card- 
players,  and  nurslings.  Carl  gave  up  the  silence-cure. 

He  hummed  about  the  room,  running  over  the  adver- 
tising pages  of  magazines,  discussing  Plato  fraternities, 
and  waiting  till  it  should  be  time  to  go  home.  Their  con- 
versation kept  returning  to  the  fraternities.  There  wasn't 
much  else  to  talk  about.  Before  to-night  they  had  done 
complete  justice  to  all  other  topics — Joralemon,  Bennie 
Rusk,  Joe  Jordan's  engagement,  Adelaide  Benner,  and 
symphony  concerts.  Gertie  embroidered,  patted  her 
hair,  smoothed  her  waist,  looked  cheerful,  rocked,  and 
spoke;  embroidered,  patted  her  hair,  smoothed  her  sleeve, 
looked  amiable,  rocked,  and  spoke — embroidered,  pat 

At  a  quarter  to  ten  Carl  gave  himself  permission  to  go. 
Said  he:  "I'll  have  to  get  on  the  job  pretty  early  to- 
morrow. Not  much  taking  it  easy  here  in  New  York, 
the  way  you  can  in  Joralemon,  eh?  So  I  guess  I'd 
better " 

"I'm  sorry  you  have  to  go  so  early."  Gertie  carefully 
stuck  her  embroidery  needle  into  her  doily,  rolled  up 
the  doily  meticulously,  laid  it  down  on  the  center-table, 
straightened  the  pile  of  magazines  which  Carl  had  de- 
ranged, and  rose.  "But  I'm  glad  you  could  drop  up  this 
evening.  Come  up  any  time  you  haven't  anything  better 
to  do.  Oh — what  about  our  tramp  ?  If  you  know  some 
place  that  is  better  than  Bronx  Park,  we  might  try  it." 

302 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Why — uh — yes — why,  sure;  we'll  have  to,  some  time/' 

"And,  Carl,  you're  coming  up  to  have  your  Christmas 
turkey  with  us,  aren't  you?" 

"I'd  like  to,  a  lot,  but  darn  it,  I've  accepted  'nother 
invitation." 

That  was  absolutely  untrue,  and  Carl  was  wondering 
why  he  had  lied,  when  the  storm  broke. 

Gertie's  right  arm,  affectedly  held  out  from  the  elbow, 
the  hand  drooping,  in  the  attitude  of  a  refined  hostess 
saying  good-by,  dropped  stiffly  to  her  side.  Slowly  she 
thrust  out  both  arms,  shoulder-high  on  either  side,  with 
her  fists  clenched;  her  head  back  and  slightly  on  one 
side;  her  lips  open  in  agony — the  position  of  crucifixion. 
Her  eyes  looked  up,  unseeing;  then  closed  tight.  She 
drew  a  long  breath,  like  a  sigh  that  was  too  weary  for 
sound,  and  her  plump,  placid  left  hand  clutched  her  pant- 
ing breast,  while  her  right  arm  dropped  again.  All  the 
passion  of  tragedy  seemed  to  shriek  in  her  hopeless  gesture, 
and  her  silence  was  a  wail  muffled  and  despairing. 

Carl  stared,  twisting  his  watch-chain  with  nervous 
fingers,  wanting  to  flee. 

It  was  raw  woman,  with  all  the  proprieties  of  Jorale- 
mon  and  St.  Orgul's  cut  away,  who  spoke,  her  voice  con- 
stantly rising: 

"Oh,  Carl— Carl!  Oh,  why,  why,  why!  Oh,  why  don't 
you  want  me  to  go  walking  with  you,  now?  Why  don't 
you  want  to  go  anywhere  with  me  any  more?  Have  I 
displeased  you?  Oh,  I  didn't  mean  to!  Why  do  I  bore 
you  so?" 

"Oh — Gertie — oh — gee! — thunder!"  whimpered  a  dis- 
mayed youth.  A  more  mature  Hawk  Ericson  struggled  to 

life  and  soothed  her:  "Gertie,  honey,  I  didn't  mean 

Listen " 

But  she  moaned  on,  standing  rigid,  her  left  hand  on 
her  breast,  her  eyes  red,  moist,  frightened,  fixed:  "We 
always  played  together,  and  I  thought  here  in  the  city  we 
could  be  such  good  friends,  with  all  the  different  new 

303 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

things' to  do  together — why,  I  wanted  us  to  go  to  China- 
town and  theaters,  and  I  would  have  been  so  glad  to  pay 
my  share.  I've  just  been  waiting  and  hoping  you  would 
ask  me,  and  I  wanted  us  to  play  and  see — oh!  so  many 
different  new  things  together — it  would  have  been  so 

sweet,  so  sweet We  were  good  friends  at  first,  and 

then  you — you  didn't  want  to  come  here  any  more  and — 
Oh,  I  couldn't  help  seeing  it;  more  and  more  and  more  and 
more  I've  been  seeing  it;  but  I  didn't  want  to  see  it;  but 
now  I  can't  fool  myself  any  more.  I  was  so  lonely  till 
you  came  to-night,  and  when  you  spoke  about  tramp- 
ing   And  then  it  seemed  like  you  just  went  away 

from  me  again." 

"Why,  Gertie,  you  didn't  seem " 

" and  long  ago  I  really  saw  it,  the  day  we  walked 

in  the  Park  and  I  was  wicked  about  trying  to  make  you 
call  me  'Eltruda' — oh,  Carl  dear,  indeed  you  needn't 
call  me  that  or  anything  you  don't  like — and  I  tried  to 
make  you  say  I  had  a  temperament.  And  about  Ade- 
laide and  all.  And  you  went  away  and  I  thought  you 
would  come  back  to  me  that  evening — oh,  I  wanted  you 
to  come,  so  much,  and  you  didn't  even  'phone — and  I 
waited  up  till  after  midnight,  hoping  you  would  'phone, 
I  kept  thinking  surely  you  would,  and  you  never  did,  you 
never  did;  and  I  listened  and  listened  for  the  'phone  to 

ring,  and  every  time  there  was  a  noise But  it  never 

was  you.     It  never  rang  at  all.  .  .  ." 

She  dropped  back  in  the  Morris  chair,  her  eyes  against 
the  cushion,  her  hair  disordered,  both  her  hands  gripping 
the  left  arm  of  the  chair,  her  sobs  throat-catching  and 
long — throb-throb-throb  in  the  death-still  air. 

Carl  stared  at  her,  praying  for  a  chance  to  escape.  Then 
he  felt  an  instinct  prompting  him  to  sob  with  her.  Pity, 
embarrassment,  disgust,  mingled  with  his  alarm.  He 
became  amazed  that  Gertie,  easy-going  Gertie  Cowles, 
had  any  passion  at  all;  and  indignant  that  it  was  visited 
upon  himself. 

304 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

But  he  had  to  help.  He  moved  to  her  chair  and,  squat- 
ting boyishly  on  its  arm,  stroked  her  hair,  begging:  "Ger- 
tie, Gertie,  I  did  mean  to  come  up,  that  night.  Indeed 
I  did,  honey.  I  would  have  come  up,  but  I  met  some 
friends — couldn't  break  away  from  them  all  evening/' 
A  chill  ran  between  his  shoulder-blades.  It  was  a  shock 
to  the  pride  he  took  in  Ruth's  existence.  The  evening 
in  question  had  found  Ruth  for  him!  It  seemed  as 
though  Gertie  had  dared  with  shrewish  shrillness  to  in- 
trude upon  his  beautiful  hour.  But  pity  came  to  him 
again.  Stroking  her  hair,  he  went  urgently  on:  "Don't 
you  see?  Why,  blessed,  I  wouldn't  hurt  you  for  anything! 
Just  to-night — why,  you  remember,  first  thing,  I  wanted 
us  to  plan  for  some  walks;  reason  I  didn't  say  more  about 
it  was,  I  didn't  know  as  you'd  want  to,  much.  Why, 
Gertie,  anybody  would  be  proud  to  play  with  you.  You 
know  so  much  about  concerts  and  all  sorts  of  stuff.  Any- 
body'd  be  proud  to!"  He  wound  up  with  a  fictitious 
cheerfulness.  "We'll  have  some  good  long  hikes  together, 
heh?  .  .  .  It's  better  now,  isn't  it,  kiddy?  You're  just 
tired  to-night.  Has  something  been  worrying  you? 
Tell  old  Carl  all  about " 

She  wiped  her  tears  away  with  the  adorable  gesture 
of  a  child  trying  to  be  good,  and  like  a  child's  was  her 
glance,  bewildered,  hurt,  yet  trusting,  as  she  said  in  a 
small,  shy  voice:  "Would  folks  really  be  proud  to  play 
with  me?  .  .  .  We  did  use  to  have  some  dear  times,  didn't 
we!  Do  you  remember  how  we  found  some  fool's  gold, 
and  we  thought  it  was  gold  and  hid  it  on  the  shore  of  the 
lake,  and  we  were  going  to  buy  a  ship?  Do  you  remem- 
ber? You  haven't  forgotten  all  our  good  times,  while 
you've  been  so  famous,  have  you?" 

"Oh  no,  no!" 

"  But  why  don't — Carl,  why  don't  you — why  can't  you 
care  more  now?" 

"Why,  I  do  care!  You're  one  of  the  bulliest  pals  I 
have,  you  and  Ray." 

3°5 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"And  Ray!" 

She  flung  his  hand  away  and  sat  bolt  up,  angry. 

Carl  retired  to  a  chair  beside  the  Morris  chair,  fidgeting. 
"Can  you  beat  it!  Is  this  Gertie  and  me?"  he  inquired 
in  a  parenthesis  in  his  heart.  For  a  second,  as  she  stared 
haughtily  at  him,  he  spitefully  recalled  the  fact  that  Ger- 
tie had  once  discarded  him  for  a  glee-club  dentist.  But 
he  submerged  the  thought  and  listened  with  a  rather 
forced  big-brother  air  as  she  repented  of  her  anger  and 
went  on: 

"Carl,  don't  you  understand  how  hard  it  is  for  a 
woman  to  forget  her  pride  this  way?"  The  hauteur  of 
being  one  of  the  elite  of  Joralemon  again  flashed  out. 
"Maybe  if  you'll  think  real  hard  you'll  remember  I  used 
to  could  get  you  to  be  so  kind  and  talk  to  me  without 
having  to  beg  you  so  hard.  Why,  I'd  been  to  New  York 
and  known  the  nicest  people  before  you'd  ever  stirred  a 
foot  out  of  Joralemon!  You  were Oh,  please  for- 
give me,  Carl;  I  didn't  mean  to  be  snippy;  I  just  don't 
know  what  to  think  of  myself — and  I  did  used  to  think 
I  was  a  lady,  and  here  I  am  practically  up  and  telling  you 
and " 

She  leaned  from  her  chair  toward  his,  and  took  his 
hand,  touching  it,  finding  its  hard,  bony  places  and  the 
delicate  white  hollows  of  flesh  between  his  coarsened  yet 
shapely  fingers;  tracing  a  scarce-seen  vein  on  the  back; 
exploring  a  well-beloved  yet  ill-known  country.  Carl 
was  unspeakably  disconcerted.  He  was  thinking  that, 
to  him,  Gertie  was  set  aside  from  the  number  of  women 
who  could  appeal  physically,  quite  as  positively  as 
though  she  were  some  old  aunt  who  had  for  twenty  years 
seemed  to  be  the  same  adult,  plump,  uninteresting  age. 
Gertie's  solid  flesh,  the  monotony  of  her  voice,  the  un- 
imaginative fixity  of  her  round  cheeks,  a  certain  increas- 
ing slackness  about  her  waist,  even  the  faint,  stuffy  do- 
mestic scent  of  her — they  all  expressed  to  him  her  lack  of 
humor  and  fancy  and  venturesomeness.  She  was  crys- 

306 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

tallized  in  his  mind  as  a  good  friend  with  a  plain  soul  and 
sisterly  tendencies.  Awkwardly  he  said: 

"You  mustn't  talk  like  that.  .  .  .  Gee!  Gertie,  we'll  be 
in  a  regular  *  scene/  if  you  don't  watch  out! .  .  .  We're  just 
good  friends,  and  you  can  always  bank  on  me,  same  as  I 
would  on  you." 

"But  why  must  we  be  just  friends?" 

He  wanted  to  be  rude,  but  he  was  patient.  Mechani- 
cally stroking  her  hair  again,  leaning  forward  most  un- 
comfortably from  his  chair,  he  stammered:  "Oh,  I've 

been Oh,    you    know;     I've   wandered    around    so 

much  that  it's  kind  of  put  me  out  of  touch  with  even  my 
best  friends,  and  I  don't  know  where  I'm  at.  I  couldn't 

make  any  alliances Gee!  that  sounds  affected.     I 

mean:  I've  got  to  sort  of  start  in  now  all  over,  rinding 
where  I'm  at." 

"But  why  must  we  be  just  friends,  then?" 

"Listen,  child.     It's  hard  to  tell;  I  guess  I  didn't  know 

till  now  what  it  does  mean,  but  there's  a  girl Wait; 

listen.  There's  a  girl — at  first  I  simply  thought  it  was 
good  fun  to  know  her,  but  now,  Lord !  Gertie,  you'd  think 
I  was  pretty  sentimental  if  I  told  you  what  I  think  of  her. 
God!  I  want  to  see  her  so  much!  Right  now!  I  haven't 
let  myself  know  how  much  I  wanted  her.  She's  every- 
thing. She's  sister  and  chum  and  wife  and  everything." 

"It's But  I  am  glad  for  you.     Will  you  believe 

that?     And   perhaps  you   understand   how  I   felt,   now. 

I'm  very  sorry  I  let  myself  go.     I  hope  you  will Oh, 

please  go  now." 

He  sprang  up,  only  too  ready  to  go.  But  first  he  kissed 
her  hand  with  a  courtly  reverence,  and  said,  with  a  sweet- 
ness new  to  him:  "Dear,  will  you  forgive  me  if  I've  ever 
hurt  you?  And  will  you  believe  how  very,  very  much  I 
honor  you  ?  And  when  I  see  you  again  there  won't  be — 
we'll  both  forget  all  about  to-night,  won't  we?  We'll  just 
be  the  old  Carl  and  Gertie  again.  Tell  me  to  come 

when " 

307 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

"Yes.     I  will.     Good  night." 

"Good  night,  Gertie.     God  bless  you." 

He  never  remembered  where  he  walked  that  night 
when  he  had  left  Gertie.  The  exercise,  the  chill  of  the 
night,  gradually  set  his  numbed  mind  working  again. 
But  it  dwelt  with  Ruth,  not  with  Gertie.  Now  that  he 
had  given  words  to  his  longing  for  Ruth,  to  his  pride  in 
her,  he  understood  that  he  had  passed  the  hidden  border 
of  that  misty  land  called  "  being  in  love,"  which  cartog- 
raphers have  variously  described  as  a  fruitful  tract  of 
comfortable  harvests,  as  a  labyrinth  with  walls  of  rose  and 
silver,  and  as  a  tenebrous  realm  of  unhappy  ghosts. 

He  stopped  at  a  street  corner  where,  above  a  saloon 
with  a  large  beer-sign,  stretched  dim  tenement  windows 
toward  a  dirty  sky;  and  on  that  drab  corner  glowed  for 
a  moment  the  mystic  light  of  the  Rose  of  All  the  World — 
before  a  Tammany  saloon!  Chin  high,  yearning  toward 
a  girl  somewhere  off  to  the  south,  Carl  poignantly  recalled 
how  Ruth  had  worshiped  the  stars.  His  soul  soared, 
lark  and  hawk  in  one,  triumphant  over  the  matter-of- 
factness  of  daily  life.  Carl  Ericson  the  mechanic,  stand- 
ing in  front  of  a  saloon,  with  a  laundry  to  one  side  and  a 
cigars-and-stationery  shop  round  the  corner,  was  one  with 
the  young  priest  saying  mass,  one  with  the  suffragist 
woman  defying  a  jeering  mob,  one  with  Ruth  Winslow 
listening  to  the  ringing  stars. 

"  God — help — me — to — be — worthy — of— her !" 

Nothing  more  did  he  say,  in  words,  yet  he  was  changed 
for  ever. 

Changed.  True  that  when  he  got  home,  half  an  hour 
later,  and  in  the  dark  ran  his  nose  against  an  opened  door, 
he  said,  "Damn  it!"  very  naturally.  True  that  on  Mon- 
day, back  in  the  office  that  awaits  its  victims  equally 
after  Sundays  golden  or  dreary,  he  forgot  Ruth's  existence 
for  hours  at  a  time.  True  that  at  lunch  with  two  VanZile 
automobile  salesmen  he  ate  Wiener  Schnitzel  and  shot 

308 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

dice  for  cigars,  with  no  signs  of  a  mystic  change.  It 
is  even  true  that,  dining  at  the  Brevoort  with  Charley 
Forbes,  he  though  of  Istra  Nash,  and  for  a  minute  was 
lonely  for  Istra's  artistic  dissipation.  Yet  the  change 
was  there. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

FROM  Titherington,  the  aviator,  in  his  Devonshire 
home,  from  a  millionaire  amateur  flier  among  the 
orange-groves  at  Pasadena,  from  his  carpenter  father  in 
Joralemon,  and  from  Gertie  in  New  York,  Carl  had 
invitations  for  Christmas,  but  none  that  he  could  accept. 
VanZile  had  said,  pleasantly,  "Going  out  to  the  country 
for  Christmas?" 

"Yes,"  Cal  had  lied. 

Again  he  saw  himself  as  the  Dethroned  Prince,  and  re- 
membered that  one  year  ago,  sailing  for  South  America 
to  fly  with  Tony  Bean,  he  had  been  the  lion  at  a  Christmas 
party  on  shipboard,  while  Martin  Dockerill,  his  mechanic, 
had  been  a  friendly  slave. 

He  spent  most  of  Christmas  Eve  alone  in  his  room, 
turning  over  old  letters,  and  aviation  magazines  with 
pictures  of  Hawk  Ericson,  wondering  whether  he  might 
not  go  back  to  that  lost  world.  Josiah  Bagby,  Jr.,  son 
of  the  eccentric  doctor  at  whose  school  Carl  had  learned 
to  fly,  was  experimenting  with  hydroaeroplanes  and  with 
bomb-dropping  devices  at  Palm  Beach,  and  imploring 
Carl,  as  the  steadiest  pilot  in  America,  to  join  him.  The 
dully  noiseless  room  echoed  the  music  of  a  steady  motor 
carrying  him  out  over  a  blue  bay.  Carl's  own  answer  to 
the  tempter  vision  was:  "Rats!  I  can't  very  well  leave 
the  Touricar  now,  and  I  don't  know  as  I've  got  my  flying 
nerve  back  yet.  Besides,  Ruth " 

Always  he  thought  of  Ruth,  uneasy  with  the  desire  to 
be  out  dancing,  laughing,  playing  with  her.  He  was  tor- 
mented by  a  question  he  had  been  threshing  out  for 

310 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

days:    Might  he  permissibly  have  sent  her  a  Christmas 
present? 

He  went  to  bed  at  ten  o'clock — on  Christmas  Eve, 
when  the  streets  were  surging  with  voices  and  gay  steps, 
when  rollicking  piano-tunes  from  across  the  street  pene- 
trated even  closed  windows,  and  a  German  voice  as  rich 
as  milk  chocolate  was  caressing,  "Oh  Tannenbaum,  oh 
Tannenbaum,  wie  grun  sind  deine  Blatter. "...  Then  slept 
for  nine  hours,  woke  with  rapturous  remembrance  that 
he  didn't  have  to  go  to  the  office,  and  sang  "The  Banks 
of  the  Saskatchewan"  in  his  bath.  When  he  returned  to 
the  house,  after  breakfast,  he  found  a  letter  from  Ruth: 

The  Day  before  Xmas  &  all  thru  the  Mansion 
The  Maids  with  Turkey  are  Stirring — Please  Pardon 
the  Scansion. 

DEAR  PLAYMATE, — You  said  on  our  tramp  that  I  would  make 
a  good  playmate,  but  I'm  sure  that  I  should  be  a  very  poor  one  if 
I  did  not  wish  you  a  gloriously  merry  Xmas  &  a  New  Year  that 
will  bring  you  all  the  dear  things  you  want.  I  shall  be  glad  if 
you  do  not  get  this  letter  on  Xmas  day  itself  if  that  means  that 
you  are  off  at  some  charming  country  house  having  a  most 
katische  (is  that  the  way  it  is  spelled,  probably  not)  time. 
But  if  by  any  chance  you  are  in  town,  won't  you  make  your 
playmate's  shout  to  you  from  her  back  yard  a  part  of  your 
Xmas?  She  feels  shy  about  sending  this  effusive  greeting  with 
all  its  characteristic  sloppiness  of  writing,  but  she  does  want  you 
to  have  a  welcome  to  Xmas  fun,  &  won't  you  please  give  the 
Touricar  a  pair  of  warm  little  slippers  from 

RUTH  GAYLORD  WINSLOW. 

P.S.  Mrs.  Tirrell  has  sent  me  an  angel  miniature  Jap  garden, 
with  a  tiny  pergola  &  real  dwarf  trees  &  a  bridge  that  you  ex- 
pect an  Alfred  Noyes  lantern  on,  &  Oh  Carl,  an  issa  goldfish 
in  a  pool!  Miss  R.  WINSLOW. 

"' all  the  dear  things  I  want'!"   Carl  repeated, 

standing  tranced   in  the  hall,  oblivious  of  the  doctor- 
landlord  snooping  at  the  back.     "Ruth  blessed,  do  you 

3" 


THE    TRAIL   OF    THE    HAWK 

know  the  thing  I  want  most?  .  .  .  Say!  Great!  I'll 
hustle  out  and  send  her  all  the  flowers  in  the  world.  Or, 
no.  I've  got  it."  He  was  already  out  of  the  house, 
hastening  toward  the  subway.  "I'll  send  her  one  of  these 
lingerie  tea-baskets  with  all  kinds  of  baby  pots  of  preserves 
and  tea-balls  and  stuff.  .  .  .  Wonder  what  Dunleavy  sent 
her? .  .  .  Rats!  I  don't  care.  Jiminy!  I'm  happy!  Me  to 
Palm  Beach  to  fly?  Not  a  chance!" 

He  had  Christmas  dinner  in  state,  with  the  California 
Exiles  Club.  He  was  craftily  careless  about  the  manner 
in  which  he  touched  a  letter  in  his  pocket  for  gloves,  which 
tailors  have  been  inspired  to  put  on  the  left  side  of  dress- 
clothes. 

Twice  Carl  called  at  Ruth's  in  the  two  weeks  after 
Christmas.  Once  she  declared  that  she  was  tired  of 
modern  life,  that  socialism  and  agnosticism  shocked 
her,  that  the  world  needed  the  courtly  stiffness  of  mid- 
Victorian  days,  as  so  ably  depicted  in  the  works  of  Mrs. 
Florence  Barclay — needed  hair-cloth  as  a  scourge  for  white 
tango-dancing  backs.  As  for  her,  Ruth  announced,  she 
was  going  to  be  mid-Victorian  just  as  soon  as  she  could 
find  a  hair-locket,  siik  mitts,  and  an  elderly  female  tor- 
toise-shell cat  with  an  instinctive  sense  of  delicacy.  She 
sat  bolt-upright  on  the  front  of  the  most  impersonal 
French-gilt  chair  in  the  drawing-room  and  asserted  that 
Phil  Dunleavy,  with  his  safe  ancestry  of  two  generations 
of  wholesalers  and  strong  probabilities  about  the  respec- 
tability of  still  another  generation,  was  her  ideal  of  a 
Christian  gentleman.  She  wore  a  full  white  muslin  gown 
with  a  blue  sash,  her  hair  primly  parted  in  the  middle,  her 
right  hand  laid  flat  over  her  left  in  her  lap.  Her  vocabu- 
lary was  choice.  For  a  second,  when  she  referred  to 
winter  sports  at  Lake  Placid,  she  forgot  herself  and  tucked 
one  smooth,  silk-clad,  un-mid-Victorian  leg  under  her, 
but  instantly  she  recovered  her  poise  of  a  vicarage,  re- 
marking, "I  have  been  subject  to  very  careless  influences 

312 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

lately."  She  called  him  neither  "Carl"  nor  "Mr.  Eric- 
son"  nor  anything  else,  and  he  dared  not  venture  on 
Ruth. 

He  went  home  in  bewilderment.  As  he  crossed  Broad- 
way he  loitered  insolently,  as  though  challenging  the  fly- 
ing squadron  of  taxicabs  to  run  him  down.  "What  do  I 
care  if  they  hit  me?"  he  inquired,  savagely,  of  his  sym- 
pathetic and  applauding  self.  Every  word  she  had  said 
he  examined,  finding  double  and  triple  meanings,  warning 
himself  not  to  regard  her  mood  seriously,  but  unable  to 
make  the  warning  take. 

On  his  next  call  there  was  a  lively  Ruth  who  invited 
him  up  to  the  library,  read  extracts  from  Stephen  Lea- 
cock's  Nonsense  Novels;  turned  companionably  serious, 
and  told  him  how  divided  were  her  sympathies  between 
her  father — the  conscientiously  worried  employer — and  a 
group  of  strikers  in  his  factory.  She  made  coffee  in  a 
fantastic  percolator,  and  played  Debussy  and  ragtime. 
At  ten-thirty,  the  hour  at  which  he  had  vehemently  re- 
solved to  go,  they  were  curled  in  two  big  chairs  eating 
chocolate  peppermints  and  talking  of  themselves  apropos 
of  astronomy  and  the  Touricar  and  Lincoln  Beachey's 
daring  and  Mason  Winslow  and  patriotism  and  Joralemon. 
Ruth's  father  drifted  in  from  his  club  at  a  quarter  to 
eleven.  Carl  now  met  him  for  the  first  time.  He  was 
a  large-stomached,  bald,  sober,  friendly  man,  with  a 
Gladstone  collar,  a  huge  watch-chain,  kindly  trousers  and 
painfully  smart  tan  boots,  a  father  of  the  kind  who  gives 
cigars  and  non-committal  encouragement  to  daughter's 
suitors. 

It  takes  a  voice  with  personality  and  modulations  to 
make  a  fifteen-minute  telephone  conversation  tolerable, 
and  youth  to  make  it  possible.  Ruth  had  both.  For 
fifteen  minutes  she  discussed  with  Carl  the  question  of 
whether  she  should  go  to  Marion  Browne's  dinner-dance 
at  Delmonico's,  as  Phil  wished,  or  go  skeeing  in  the  West- 

313 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

chester  Hills,  as  Carl  wished,  the  coming  Saturday — the 
first  Saturday  in  February,  1913.     Carl  won. 

They  arrived  at  a  station  in  the  Bedford  Hills,  bearing 
long,  carved-prowed  Norwegian  skees,  which  seemed  to 
hypnotize  the  other  passengers.  To  Carl's  joy  (for  he 
associated  that  suit  with  the  Palisades  and  their  discovery 
of  each  other),  Ruth  was  in  her  blue  corduroy,  with  high- 
lace  boots  and  a  gray  sweater  jacket  of  silky  wool.  Carl 
displayed  a  tweed  Norfolk  jacket,  a  great  sweater,  and 
mittens  unabashed.  He  had  a  mysterious  pack  which, 
he  informed  the  excited  Ruth,  contained  Roland's  sword 
and  the  magic  rug  of  Bagdad.  Together  they  were  apple- 
cheeked,  chattering  children  of  outdoors. 

For  all  the  horizon's  weight  of  dark  clouds,  clear  sun- 
shine lay  on  clear  snow  as  they  left  the  train  and  trotted 
along  the  road,  carrying  their  skees  beyond  the  outskirts 
of  the  town.  Country  sleigh-bells  chinkled  down  a  hill; 
children  shouted  and  made  snow  houses;  elders  stamped 
their  feet  and  clucked,  "Fine  day!"  New  York  was  far 
off  and  ridiculously  unimportant.  Carl  and  Ruth  reached 
an  open  sloping  field,  where  the  snow  that  partly  covered 
a  large  rock  was  melting  at  its  lacy,  crystaled  edges, 
staining  the  black  rock  to  a  shiny  wetness  that  was  in- 
finitely cheerful  in  its  tiny  reflection  of  the  blue  sky  at 
the  zenith.  On  a  tree  whose  bleak  bark  the  sun  had 
warmed,  vagrant  sparrows  in  hand-me-down  feathers  dis- 
cussed rumors  of  the  establishment  of  a  bread-crumb  line 
and  the  better  day  that  was  coming  for  all  proletarian 
sparrows*  A  rounded  drift  of  snow  stood  out  against  a 
red  barn.  The  litter  of  corn-stalks  and  straw  in  a  barn- 
yard was  transformed  from  disordered  muck  to  a  tessella- 
tion of  warm  silver  and  old  gold.  Not  the  delicate  red  and 
browns  and  grays  alone,  but  everywhere  the  light,  as  well, 
caressed  the  senses.  A  distant  dog  barked  good-natured 
greeting  to  all  the  world.  The  thawing  land  stirred  with 
a  promise  that  spring  might  in  time  return  to  lovers. 

3H 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"Oh,  to-day  is  beautiful  as — as — it's  beautiful  as  frost- 
ing on  a  birthday-cake!"  cried  Ruth,  as  she  slipped  her 
feet  into  the  straps  of  her  skees,  preparing  for  her  first 
lesson.  "These  skees  seem  so  dreadfully  long  and  un- 
manageable, now  I  get  them  on.  Like  seven-foot  table- 
knives,  and  my  silly  feet  like  orange  seeds  in  the  middle 
of  the  knives!" 

The  skees  were  unmanageable. 

One  climbed  up  on  the  other,  and  Ruth  tried  to  lift  her 
own  weight.  When  she  was  sliding  down  a  hillock  they 
spread  apart,  eager  to  chase  things  lying  in  entirely  dif- 
ferent directions.  Ruth  came  down  between  them,  her 
pretty  nose  plowing  the  wet  snow-crust.  Carl,  speeding 
beside  her,  his  obedient  skees  exactly  parallel,  lifted  her 
and  brushed  the  snow  from  her  furs  and  her  nose.  She  was 
laughing. 

Falling,  getting  up,  learning  at  last  the  zest  of  coast- 
ing and  of  handling  those  gigantic  skates  on  level  stretches, 
she  accompanied  him  from  hill  to  hill,  through  fences, 
skirting  thickets,  till  they  reached  a  hollow  at  the  heart 
of  a  farm  where  a  brooklet  led  into  deeper  woods.  The 
afternoon  was  passing;  the  swarthy  clouds  marched  grim- 
ly from  the  east;  but  the  low  sun  red-lettered  the  day. 
The  country-bred  Carl  showed  her  how  thin  sheets  of  ice 
formed  on  the  bank  of  the  stream  and  jutted  out  like 
shelves  in  an  elfin  cupboard,  delicate  and  curious-edged 
as  Venetian  glass;  and  how,  through  an  opening  in  the  ice, ! 
she  could  spy  upon  a  secret  world  of  clear  water,  not  dead 
from  winter,  but  alive  with  piratical  black  bugs  over  sand 
of  exquisitely  pale  gray,  like  Lilliputian  submarines  in  a ' 
fairy  sea. 

A  rabbit  hopped  away  among  the  trees  beyond  them, 
and  Carl,  following  its  trail,  read  to  her  the  forest  hiero- 
glyphics— tracks  of  rabbit  and  chipmunk  and  crow,  of 
field-mouse  and  house-cat,  in  the  snow-paved  city  of 
night  animals  with  its  edifices  of  twiggy  underbrush. 

The  setting  sun  was  overclouded,  now;  the  air  sharp; 
21  315 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

the  grove  uneasily  quiet.  Branches,  contracting  in  the 
returning  cold,  ticked  like  a  solemn  clock  of  the  wood- 
land; and  about  them  slunk  the  homeless  mysteries  that, 
at  twilight,  revisit  even  the  tiniest  forest,  to  wail  of  the 
perished  wilderness. 

"I  know  there's  Indians  sneaking  along  in  there,"  she 
whispered,  "and  wolves  and  outlaws;  and  maybe  a  Hud- 
son Bay  factor  coming,  in  a  red  Mackinaw  coat." 

"And  maybe  a  mounted  policeman  and  a  lost  girl." 

"Saying  which,"   remarked  Ruth,  "the  brave  young 
man  undid  his  pack  and  disclosed  to  the  admiring  eyes 
of  the  hungry  lass — meaning  me,  especially  the  '  hungry  '- 
the  wonders  of  his  pack,  which  she  had  been  covertly 
eying  amid  all  the  perils  of  the  afternoon." 

Carl  did  not  know  it,  but  all  his  life  he  had  been  seek- 
ing a  girl  who  would,  without  apologetic  explanation, 
begin  a  story  with  herself  and  him  for  its  characters.  He 
instantly  continued  her  tale: 

"And  from  the  pack  the  brave  young  hero,  whose  new 
Norfolk  jacket  she  admired  such  a  lot — as  I  said,  from  the 
pack  he  pulled  two  clammy,  blue,  hard-boiled  eggs  and  a 
thermos  bottle  filled  with  tea  into  which  I've  probably 
forgotten  to  put  any  sugar." 

"And  then  she  stabbed  him  and  went  swiftly  home!" 
Ruth  concluded  the  narration.  .  .  .  "Don't  be  frivolous 
about  food.  Just  one  hard-boiled  egg  and  you  perish! 
None  of  these  gentle  'convenient'  shoe-box  picnics  for 
me.  Of  course  I  ought  to  pretend  that  I  have  a  bird- 
like  appetite,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  could  devour  an 
English  mutton-chop,  four  kidneys,  and  two  hot  sausages, 
and  then  some  plum-pudding  and  a  box  of  chocolates, 
assorted." 

"If  this  were  a  story,"  said  Carl,  knocking  the  crusted 
snow  from  dead  branches  and  dragging  them  toward  the 
center  of  a  small  clearing,  "the  young  hero  from  Jorale- 
mon  would  now  remind  the  city  gal  that  'tis  only  among 
God's  free  hills  that  you  can  get  an  appetite,  and  then 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

the  author  would  say,  'Nothing  had  ever  tasted  so  good 
as  those  trout,  yanked  from  the  brook  and  cooked  to  a 
turn  on  the  sizzling  coals.  She  looked  at  the  stalwart 
young  man,  so  skilfully  frying  the  flapjacks,  and  con- 
trasted him  with  the  effeminate  fops  she  had  met  on 
Fifth  Avenue/.  .  .  But  meanwhile,  squaw,  you'd  better 
tear  some  good  dry  twigs  off  this  bush  for  kindling." 

Gathering  twigs  while  Carl  scrabbled  among  the  roots 
for  dry  leaves,  Ruth  went  on  again  with  their  story: 
"'Yes/  said  the  fair  maid  o'  the  wilds,  obediently,  bending 
her  poor,  patient  back  at  the  cruel  behest  of  the  stern  man 
of  granite.  .  .  .  May  I  put  something  into  the  story  which 
will  politely  indicate  how  much  the  unfortunate  lady  ap- 
preciates this  heavenly  snow-place  in  contrast  to  the 
beastly  city,  even  though  she  is  so  abominably  treated  ?" 

"Yes,  but  as  I  warned  you,  nothing  about  the  effect 
of  out-o'-doors  on  the  appetite.  All  you've  got  to  do  is 
to  watch  a  city  broker  eat  fourteen  pounds  of  steak,  three 
pots  of  coffee,  and  four  black  cigars  at  a  Broadway  restau- 
rant to  realize  that  the  effeminate  city  man  occasionally 
gets  up  quite  some  appetite,  too!" 

"My  dear,"  she  wailed,  "aside  from  the  vulgarity  of  the 
thing — you  know  that  no  one  ever  admits  to  a  real  in- 
terest in  food — I  am  so  hungry  that  if  there  is  any  more 
mention  of  eating  I  shall  go  off  in  a  corner  and  howl. 
You  know  how  those  adorable  German  Christmas  stones 
always  begin:  ' Es  war  Weinachts  abend.  Tiefer  Schnee 
lag  am  Boden.  Durch  das  Wold  kam  ein  armes  Mddchen 
das  weinte  bitterlich.'  The  reason  why  she  weinted  bitter- 
lich  was  because  her  soul  was  hurt  at  being  kept  out  of 
the  secret  of  the  beautiful,  beautiful  food  that  was  hidden 
in  the  hero's  pack.  Now  let's  have  no  more  imaginary 
menus.  Let's  discuss  Nijinsky  and  the  musical  asses 
till  you  are  ready " 

"All  ready  now!"  he  proclaimed,  kneeling  by  the 
pyramid  of  leaves,  twigs,  and  sticks  he  had  been  erecting. 
He  lit  a  match  and  kindled  a  leaf.  Fire  ran  through  the 

317 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

mass  and  rosy  light  brightened  the  darkened  snow. 
"By  the  way,"  he  said,  as  with  cold  fingers  he  pulled 
at  the  straps  of  his  pack,  "I'm  beginning  to  be  afraid 
that  we'll  be  a  lot  later  getting  home  than  we  ex- 
pected." 

"Well,  I  suppose  I'll  go  to  sleep  on  the  train,  and  wake 
up  at  every  station  and  wail  and  make  you  uncomfortable, 
and  Mason  will  be  grieved  and  disapproving  when  I  get 
home  late,  but  just  now  I  don't  care.  I  don't!  It's  la 
belle  aventure!  Carl,  do  you  realize  that  never  in  my 
twenty-four  (almost  twenty-five  now!)  never  in  all  these 
years  have  I  been  out  like  this  in  the  wilds,  in  the  dark, 
not  even  with  Phil?  And  yet  I  don't  feel  afraid — just 
terribly  happy." 

"You  do  trust  me,  don't  you?" 

"You  know  I  do.  ...  Yet  when  I  realize  that  I  really 
don't  know  you  at  all !" 

He  had  brought  out,  from  the  pack,  granite-ware  plates 
and  cups,  a  stew-pan  and  a  coffee-pot,  a  ruddied  paper  of 
meat  and  a  can  of  peas,  rolls,  Johnny-cake,  maple  syrup, 
a  screw-top  bottle  of  cream,  pasteboard  boxes  of  salt  and 
pepper  and  sugar.  Lamb  chops,  coiled  in  the  covered 
stew-pan,  loudly  broiled  in  their  own  fat,  and  to  them 
the  peas,  heated  in  their  can,  were  added  when  the  coffee 
began  to  foam.  He  dragged  a  large  log  to  the  side  of  the 
fire,  and  Ruth,  there  sitting,  gorged  shamelessly.  Carl 
himself  did  not  eat  reticently. 

Light  snow  was  falling  now,  driven  by  them  on  the 
rising  wind.  The  fire,  where  hot  coals  had  piled  higher 
and  higher,  was  a  refuge  in  the  midst  of  the  darkness. 
Carl  rolled  up  another  log,  for  protection  from  the  weather, 
and  placed  it  at  right  angles  to  the  first. 

"You  were  saying,  at  Mrs.  Needham's,  that  we  ought 
to  have  an  old  farm-house,"  he  remarked,  while  she 
snuggled  before  the  fire,  her  back  against  a  log,  her  round 
knees  up  under  her  chin,  her  arms  clasping  her  legs, 
"Let's  build  one  right  here." 

318 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Instantly  she  was  living  it.  In  the  angle  between  the 
logs  she  laid  out  an  outline  of  twigs,  exclaiming:  "Here 
is  my  room,  with  low  ceiling  and  exposed  rafters  and  a 
big  open  fireplace.  Not  a  single  touch  of  pale  pink  or 
rosebuds!" 

"Then  here's  my  room,  with  a  work-bench  and  a  bed 
nine  feet  long  that  I  can  lose  myself  in." 

"Then  here  outside  my  room,"  said  Ruth,  "I'm  going 
to  have  a  brick  terrace,  and  all  around  it  heliotrope  grow- 
ing in  pots  on  the  brick  wall." 

"I'm  sorry,  blessed,  but  you  can't  have  a  terrace. 
Don't  you  realize  that  every  brick  would  have  to  be 
carted  two  hundred  miles  through  this  wilderness?" 

"I  don't  care.  If  you  appreciated  me  you'd  carry 
them  on  your  back,  if  necessary." 

"Well,  I'll  think  it  over,  but Oh,  look  here,  I'm 

going  to  have  a  porch  made  out  of  fresh  saplings,  outside 
of  my  room,  and  it  '11  overlook  the  hills,  and  it  '11  have 
outdoor  cots  with  olive-gray  army  blankets  over  them, 
and  when  you  wake  up  in  the  morning  you'll  see  the  hills 
in  the  first  sunlight." 

"Glorious!  I'll  give  up  my  terrace.  Though  I  do 
think  I  was  w'eedled  into  it." 

"Seriously,  Ruth,  wouldn't  you  like  to  have  such  a 
place,  back  in  the  wilderness?" 

"Love  it!  I'd  be  perfectly  happy  there.  At  least  for 
a  while.  I  wouldn't  care  if  I  never  saw  another  aigrette 
or  a  fat  Rhine  maiden  singing  in  thirty  sharps." 

"Listen,  how  would  this  be  for  a  site?  (Let  me  stick 
some  more  wood  there  on  your  side  of  the  fire.)  Once 
when  I  was  up  in  the  high  Sierras,  in  California,  I  found 
a  wooded  bluff — you  looked  a  thousand  feet  straight 
down  to  a  clear  lake,  green  as  mint-sauce  pretty  nearly, 
not  a  wrinkle  on  it.  There  wasn't  a  sound  anywhere  ex- 
cept when  the  leaves  rustled.  Then  on  the  other  side 
you  looked  way  up  to  a  peak  covered  with  snow,  and  a 
big  eagle  sailing  overhead — sailing  and  sailing,  hour  after 

319 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

hour.  And  you  could  smell  the  pine  needles  and  sit 
there  and  look  way  off Would  you  like  it?" 

"Oh,  I  can't  tell  you  how  much!" 

"Have  to  go  there  some  day." 

"When  you're  president  of  the  VanZile  Company  you 
must  give  me  a  Touricar  to  go  in,  and  perhaps  I  shall  let 
you  go,  too." 

"Right!  I'll  be  chauffeur  and  cook  and  everything." 
Quietly  exultant  at  her  sweet,  unworded  promise  of  liking, 
he  hastily  said,  to  cover  that  thrill,  "  Even  a  poor  old  low- 
brow mechanic  like  me  does  get  a  kind  of  poetic  fervor 
out  of  a  view  like  that." 

"But  you  aren't  a  low-brow  mechanic.  You  make  me 
so  dreadfully  weary  when  you're  mock-humble.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  you're  a  famous  man  and  I'm  a  poor  little 
street  waif.  For  instance,  the  way  you  talk  about  social- 
ism when  you  get  interested  and  let  yourself  go.  Really 
excited.  I'd  always  thought  that  aviators  and  other  sorts 
of  heroes'  were  such  stolid  dubs." 

"Gee!  it  'd  be  natural  enough  if  I  did  like  to  talk.  Im- 
agine the  training  in  being  with  the  English  superintend- 
ent at  the  mine,  that  I  was  telling  you  about,  and  hearing 
Frazer  lecture,  and  knowing  Tony  Bean  with  his  South- 
American  interests,  and  most  of  all,  of  course,  knowing 

Forrest  Haviland.  If  I  had  any  pep  in  me Course 

I'm  terribly  slangy,  I  suppose,  but  I  couldn't  help  wad- 
ing right  in  and  wanting  to  talk  to  everybody  about 
everything." 

"Yes.  Yes.  Of  course  I'm  abominably  slangy,  too. 
I  wonder  if  every  one  isn't,  except  in  books.  .  .  .  We've 
left  our  house  a  little  unfinished,  Carl." 

"I'm  afraid  we'll  have  to,  blessed.  We'll  have  to  be 
going.  It's  past  seven,  now;  and  we  must  be  sure  to 
catch  the  8.09  and  get  back  to  town  about  nine." 

"I  can't  tell  you  how  sorry  I  am  we  must  leave  our 
house  in  the  wilds." 

"You  really  have  enjoyed  it?"  He  was  cleaning  the 
320 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

last  of  the  dishes  with  snow,  and  packing  them  away. 
"Do  you  know,"  he  said,  cautiously,  "I  always  used  to 
feel  that  a  girl — you  say  you  aren't  in  society,  but  I  mean 
a  girl  like  you — I  used  to  think  it  was  impossible  to  play 
with  such  a  girl  unless  a  man  was  rich,  which  I  excessively 
am  not,  with  my  little  money  tied  up  in  the  Touricar. 
Yet  here  we  have  an  all-day  party,  and  it  costs  less  than 
three  really  good  seats  at  the  theater." 

"I  know.  Phil  is  always  saying  that  he  is  too  poor  to 
have  a  good  time,  and  yet  his  grandmother  left  him 
fifteen  thousand  dollars  capital  in  his  own  right,  besides 
his  allowance  from  his  father  and  his  salary  from  the  law 
firm;  and  he  infuriates  me  sometimes — aside  from  the 
tactlessness  of  the  thing — by  quite  plainly  suggesting 
that  I'm  so  empty-headed  that  I  won't  enjoy  going  out 
with  him  unless  he  spends  a  lot  of  money  and  makes 
waiters  and  ushers  obsequious.  There  are  lots  of  my 
friends  who  think  that  way,  both  the  girls  and  the  men. 
They  never  seem  to  realize  that  if  they  were  just  human 
beings,  as  you  and  I  have  been  to-day,  and  not  hide- 
bound members  of  the  dance-and-tea  league,  they  could 
beat  that  beastly  artificial  old  city.  .  .  .  Phil  once  told  me 
that  no  man — mind  you,  no  one  at  all — could  possibly 
marry  on  less  that  fifteen  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Simply 
proved  it  beyond  a  question." 

"That  let's  me  out." 

"Phil  said  that  no  one  could  possibly  live  on  the  West 
Side — of  course  the  fact  that  he  and  I  are  both  living  on 
the  West  Side  doesn't  count — and  the  cheapest  good  apart- 
ments near  Fifth  Avenue  cost  four  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  And  then  one  can't  possibly  get  along  with  less 
than  two  cars  and  four  maids  and  a  chauffeur.  Can't  be 
done!" 

"He's  right.  Fawncy!  Only  three  maids.  Might  as 
well  be  dead." 

The  pack  was  ready,  now;  he  was  swinging  it  to  his 
back  and  preparing  to  stamp  out  the  fire.  But  he  dropped 

321 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

his  burden  and  faced  her  in  the  low  firelight.  "Ruth, 
you  won't  make  up  your  mind  to  marry  Phil  till  you're 
sure,  will  you?  You'll  play  with  me  awhile,  won't  you? 
Can't  we  explore  a  few  more " 

She  laughed  nervously,  trying  to  look  at  him.  "As  I 
said,  Phil  won't  condescend  to  consider  poor  me  till  he 
has  his  fifteen  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  that  won't  be 
for  some  time,  I  think,  considering  he  is  too  well-bred 
to  work  hard." 

"But  seriously,  you  will Oh,  I  don't  know  how 

to  put  it.  You  will  let  me  be  your  playmate,  even  as 
much  as  Phil  is,  while  we're  still " 

"Carl,  I've  never  played  as  much  with  any  one  as  with 
you.x  You  make  most  of  the  men  I  know  seem  very  un- 
enterprising. It  frightens  me.  Perhaps  I  oughtn't  to 
let  you  jump  the  fence  so  easily." 

"You  won't  let  Phil  lock  you  up  for  a  while?" 

"No.  .  .  .  Mustn't  we  be  going?" 

"Thank  you  for  letting  the  outlaw  come  to  your  party. 
The  fire 's  out.  Come." 

With  the  quenching  of  the  fire  they  were  left  in  smoth- 
ering darkness.  "Where  do  we  go?"  she  worried.  "I 
feel  completely  lost.  I  can't  make  out  a  thing.  I  feel 
so  lost  and  so  blind,  after  looking  at  the  fire." 

Her  voice  betrayed  that  he  was  suddenly  a  stranger 
to  her. 

With  hasty  assurance  he  said:  "Sit  tight!  See.  We 
head  for  that  tall  oak,  up  the  slope,  then  through  the 
clearing,  keeping  to  the  right.  You'll  be  able  to  see  the 
oak  as  soon  as  you  get  the  firelight  out  of  your  eyes. 
Remember  I  used  to  hunt  every  fall,  as  a  kid,  and  come 
back  through  the  dark.  Don't  worry." 

"I  can  just  make  out  the  tree  now." 

"Right.     Now  for  it." 

"Let  me  carry  my  skees." 

"No,  you  just  watch  your  feet."  His  voice  was  pleas- 
ant, quiet,  not  too  intimate.  "Don't  try  to  guide  your- 

322 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

self  by  your  eyes.  Let  your  feet  find  the  safe  ground. 
Your  eyes  will  fool  you  in  the  dark." 

It  was  a  hard  pull,  the  way  back.  Encumbered  with 
pack  and  two  pairs  of  skees,  which  they  dared  not  use  in  the 
darkness,  he  could  not  give  her  a  helping  hand.  The 
snow  was  still  falling,  not  very  thick  nor  savagely  wind- 
borne,  yet  stinging  their  eyes  as  they  crossed  open  moors 
and  the  wind  leaped  at  them.  Once  Ruth  slipped,  on  a 
rock  or  a  chunk  of  ice,  and  came  down  with  an  infuriating 
jolt.  Before  he  could  drop  the  skees  she  struggled  up  and 
said,  dryly: 

"Yes,  it  did  hurt,  and  I  know  you're  sorry,  and  there's 
nothing  you  can  do." 

Carl  grinned  and  kept  silence,  though  with  one  hand, 
as  soon  as  he  could  get  it  free  from  the  elusive  skees,  he 
lightly  patted  her  shoulder. 

She  was  almost  staggering,  so  cold  was  she  and  so 
tired,  and  so  heavy  was  the  snow  caked  on  her  boots, 
when  they  came  to  a  sharp  rise,  down  which  shone  the 
radiance  of  an  incandescent  light. 

"Road's  right  up  there,  blessed,"  he  cried,  cheerily. 

"Oh,  I  can't Yes,  I  will " 

He  dropped  the  skees,  put  one  arm  about  her  shoulders 
and  one  about  her  knees,  and  almost  before  she  had 
finished  crying,  "Oh  no,  please  don't  carry  me!"  he  was 
half-way  up  the  slope.  He  set  her  down  safe  by  the  road. 

They  caught  the  8.09  train  with  two  minutes  to  spare. 
Its  warmth  and  the  dingy  softness  of  the  plush  seats 
seemed  palatial. 

Ruth  rubbed  her  cold  hands  with  a  smile  deprecating, 
intimate;  and  her  shoulder  drooped  toward  him.  Her 
whole  being  seemed  turned  toward  him.  He  cuddled 
her  right  hand  within  his,  murmuring:  "See,  my  hand's 
a  house  where  yours  can  keep  warm."  Her  fingers  curled 
tight  and  rested  there  contentedly.  Like  a  drowsy  kitten 
she  looked  down  at  their  two  hands.  "A  little  brown 
house!"  she  said, 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

WHILE  scientists  seek  germs  that  shall  change  the 
world,  while  war  comes  or  winter  takes  earth  cap- 
tive, even  while  love  visibly  flowers,  a  power,  mighty  as 
any  of  these,  lashes  its  human  pack-train  on  the  dusty 
road  to  futility.  The  Day's  Work  is  the  name  of  that 
power. 

All  these  days  of  first  love  Carl  had  the  office  for  lower- 
ing background.  The  warm  trust  of  Ruth's  hand  on  a 
Saturday  did  not  make  plans  for  the  Touricar  any  the 
less  pressing  on  a  Monday.  The  tyranny  of  nine  to 
five  is  stronger,  more  insistent,  in  every  department  of 
life,  than  the  most  officious  oligarchy.  Inspectors  can 
be  bribed,  judges  softened,  and  recruiting  sergeants 
evaded,  but  only  the  grace  of  God  will  turn  3.30  into  5.30. 
And  Mr.  Ericson  of  the  Touricar  Company,  a  not  vastly 
important  employee  of  the  mothering  VanZile  Corporation, 
was  not  entitled  to  go  home  at  3.30,  as  a  really  rational 
man  would  have  done  when  the  sun  gold-misted  the  win- 
dows and  suggested  skating. 

No  longer  was  business  essentially  an  adventure  to 
Carl.  Doubtless  he  would  have  given  it  up  and  have 
gone  to  Palm  Beach  to  fly  a  hydro  for  Bagby,  Jr.,  had 
there  been  no  Ruth.  Bagby  wrote  that  he  was  coming 
North,  to  prepare  for  the  spring's  experiments;  wouldn't 
Carl  consider  joining  him? 

Carl  was  now,  between  his  salary  and  his  investment  in 
the  Touricar  Company,  making  about  four  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year,  and  saving  nearly  half  of  it,  against  the  inevi- 
table next  change  in  his  life,  whatever  that  should  be.  He 

3H 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

would  probably  climb  to  ten  thousand  dollars  in  five  years. 
The  Touricar  was  promising  success.  Several  had  been 
ordered  at  the  Automobile  Show;  the  Chicago,  Boston, 
and  Philadelphia  agents  of  the  company  reported  interest. 
For  no  particular  reason,  apparently,  Milwaukee  had 
taken  them  up  first;  three  Milwaukee  people  had  ordered 
cars.  .  .  .  An  artist  was  making  posters  with  beautiful 
gipsies  and  a  Touricar  and  tourists  whose  countenances 
showed  lively  appreciation  of  the  efforts  of  the  kind 
Touricar  manufacturers  to  please  and  benefit  them.  But 
the  head  salesman  of  the  company  laughed  at  Carl  when 
he  suggested  that  the  Touricar  might  not  only  bring  them 
money,  but  really  take  people  off  to  a  larger  freedom: 
"I  don't  care  a  hang  where  they  go  with  the  thing  as 
long  as  they  pay  for  it.  You  can't  be  an  idealist  and 
make  money.  You  make  the  money  and  then  you  can 
have  all  the  ideals  you  want  to,  and  give  away  some 
hospitals  and  libraries." 

They  walked  and  talked,  Ruth  and  Carl.  They 
threaded  the  Sunday-afternoon  throng  on  upper  Broad- 
way, where  on  every  clear  Sunday  all  the  apartment- 
dwellers  (if  they  have  remembered  to  have  their  trousers 
pressed  or  their  gloves  cleaned  in  preparation)  promenade 
like  stupid  black-and-white  peacocks  past  uninteresting 
apartment-houses  and  uninspiring  upper  Broadway  shops, 
while  two  blocks  away  glorious  Riverside  Drive,  with  its 
panorama  of  Hudson  and  hills  and  billowing  clouds,  its 
trees  and  secret  walks  and  the  Soldiers  and  Sailors  Monu- 
ment, is  nearly  deserted.  Together  they  scorned  the 
glossy  well-to-do  merchant  in  his  newly  ironed  top-hat, 
and  were  thus  drawn  together.  It  is  written  that  loving 
the  same  cause  makes  honest  friendship;  but  hating  the 
same  people  makes  alliances  so  delightful  that  one  can 
sit  up  late  nights,  talking. 

At  the  opening  of  the  flying  season  Carl  took  her  to  the 
Hempstead  Plains  Aviation  Field,  and,  hearing  his  expla- 

325 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

nations,  she  at  last  comprehended  emotionally  that  he 
really  was  an  aviator. 

They  tramped  through  Staten  Island;  they  had  tea 
at  the  Manhattan.  Carl  dined  with  Ruth  and  her  father; 
once  he  took  her  brother,  Mason,  to  lunch  at  the  Aero 
Club. 

Ruth  was  ill  in  March;  not  with  a  mysterious  and  ro- 
mantic malady,  but  with  grippe,  which,  she  wrote  Carl, 
made  her  hate  the  human  race,  New  York,  chanty,  and 
Shakespeare.  She  could  not  decide  whether  to  go  to 
Europe,  or  to  die  in  a  swoon  and  be  buried  under  a  mossy 
headstone. 

He  answered  that  he  would  go  abroad  for  her;  and 
every  day  she  received  tokens  bearing  New  York  post- 
marks, yet  obviously  coming  from  foreign  parts:  a  souve- 
nir card  from  the  Piraeus,  stating  that  Carl  was  "visit- 
ing cousin  T.  Demetrieff  Philopopudopulos,  and  we  are 
enjoying  our  drives  so  much.  Dem.  sends  his  love;  wish 
you  could  be  with  us";  an  absurd  string  of  beads  from 
Port  Sai'd  and  a  box  of  Syrian  sweets;  a  Hindu  puzzle 
guaranteed  to  amuse  victims  of  the  grippe,  and  gold- 
fabric  slippers  of  China;  with  long  letters  nonchalantly 
relating  encounters  with  outlaws  and  wrecks  and  new 
varieties  of  disease. 

He  called  on  her  before  her  nose  had  quite  lost  the 
grippe  or  her  temper  the  badness. 

Phil  Dunleavy  was  there,  lofty  and  cultured  in  evening 
clothes,  apparently  not  eager  to  go.  He  stayed  till  ten 
minutes  to  ten,  and,  by  his  manner  of  cold  surprise  when 
Carl  tried  to  influence  the  conversation,  was  able  to  keep 
it  to  the  Kreisler  violin  recitals,  the  architecture  of  St. 
John  the  Divine's,  and  Whitney's  polo,  while  Carl  tried 
not  to  look  sulky,  and  manoeuvered  to  get  out  the  excellent 
things  he  was  prepared  to  say  on  other  topics;  not  unlike 
the  small  boy  who  wants  to  interrupt  whist-players  and 
tell  them  about  his  new  skates.  When  Phil  was  gone 
Ruth  sighed  and  said,  belligerently: 

326 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"  Poor  Phil,  he  has  to  work  so  hard,  and  all  the  people 
at  his  office,  even  the  firm,  are  just  as  common  as  they 
can  be;  common  as  the  children  at  my  beastly  old  settle- 
ment-house." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  ' common '?"  bristled  Carl. 

"Not  of  our  class." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  'our  class*?" 

And  the  battle  was  set. 

Ruth  refused  to  withdraw  "common."  Carl  recalled 
Abraham  Lincoln  and  Golden-Rule  Jones  and  Walt  Whit- 
man on  the  subject  of  the  Common  People,  though  as  to 
what  these  sages  had  said  he  was  vague.  Ruth  burst  out: 

"Oh,  you  can  talk  all  you  like  about  theories,  but  just 
the  same,  in  real  life  most  people  are  common  as  dirt. 
And  just  about  as  admissible  to  Society.  It's  all  very  fine 
to  be  good  to  servants,  but  you  would  be  the  first  to  com- 
plain if  I  invited  the  cook  up  here." 

"Give  her  and  her  children  education  for  three  gen- 
erations  " 

She  was  perfectly  unreasonable,  and  right  in  most  of 
the  things  she  said.  He  was  perfectly  unreasonable,  and 
right  in  all  of  the  things  he  said.  Their  argument  was 
absurdly  hot,  and  hurt  them  pathetically.  It  was  diffi- 
cult, at  first,  for  Carl  to  admit  that  he  was  at  odds  with 
his  playmate.  Surely  this  was  a  sham  dissension,  of 
which  they  would  soon  tire,  which  they  would  smilingly 
give  up.  Then,  he  was  trying  not  to  be  too  contentious, 
but  was  irritated  into  retorting.  After  fifteen  minutes 
they  were  staring  at  each  other  as  at  intruding  strangers, 
he  remembering  the  fact  that  she  was  a  result  of  city  life; 
she  the  fact  that  he  wasn't  a  product  of  city  life. 

And  a  fact  which  neither  of  them  realized,  save  sub- 
consciously, was  in  the  background:  Carl  himself  had  come 
in  a  few  years  from  Oscar  Ericson's  back  yard  to  Ruth 
Winslow's  library — he  had  made  the  step  naturally,  as 
only  an  American  could,  but  it  was  a  step. 

She  was  loftily  polite.     "I'm  afraid  you  can't  quite 

327 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

understand  what  the  niceties  of  life  mean  to  people  like 
Phil.  I'm  sorry  he  won't  give  them  up  to  the  first  truck- 
driver  he  meets,  but  I'm  afraid  he  won't,  and  occasionally 
it's  necessary  to  face  facts!  Niceties  of  the  kind  he  has 


"Really  -  "     Her  heavy  eyebrows  arched  in  a  frown. 

"If  you're  going  to  get  'nice*  on  me,  of  course  you'll 
have  to  be  condescending,  and  that's  one  thing  I  won't 
permit." 

"I'm  afraid  you'll  find  that  one  has  to  permit  a  great 
many  things.  Sometimes,  apparently,  I  must  permit 
great  rudeness." 

"Have  I  been  rude?     Have  -  " 

"Yes.    Very." 

He  could  endure  no  more.  "Good  night!"  he  growled, 
and  was  gone. 

He  was  frightened  to  find  himself  out  of  the  house; 
the  door  closed  between  them;  no  going  back  without 
ringing  the  bell.  He  couldn't  go  back.  He  walked  a 
block,  slow,  incredulous.  He  stood  hesitant  before  the 
nearest  corner  drug-store,  shivering  in  the  March  wind, 
wondering  if  he  dared  go  into  the  store  and  telephone  her. 
He  was  willing  to  concede  anything.  He  planned  apt 
phrases  to  use.  Surely  everything  would  be  made  right 
if  he  could  only  speak  to  her.  He  pictured  himself  cross- 
ing the  drug-store  floor,  entering  the  telephone-booth, 
putting  five  cents  in  the  slot.  He  stared  at  the  red-and- 
green  globes  in  the  druggist's  window;  inspected  a  dis- 
play of  soaps,  and  recollected  the  fact  that  for  a  week 
now  he  had  failed  to  take  home  any  shaving-soap  and 
had  had  to  use  ordinary  hand-soap.  "Golly!  I  must  go 
in  and  get  a  shaving-stick.  No,  darn  it!  I  haven't  got 
enough  money  with  me.  I  must  try  to  remember  to  get 
some  to-morrow."  He  rebuked  himself  for  thinking  of 
soap  when  love  lay  dying.  "But  I  must  remember  to  get 
that  soap,  just  the  same!"  So  grotesque  is  man,  the  slave 

328 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

and  angel,  for  while  he  was  sick  with  the  desire  to  go  back 
to  the  one  comrade,  he  sharply  wondered  if  he  was  not 
merely  acting  all  this  agony.  He  went  into  the  store. 
But.  he  did  not  telephone  to  Ruth.  There  was  no  suffi- 
ciently convincing  reason  for  calling  her  up.  He  bought 
a  silly  ice-cream  soda,  and  talked  to  the  man  behind  the 
counter  as  he  drank  it.  All  the  while  a  tragic  Ruth  stood 
before  him,  blaming  him  for  he  knew  not  what. 

He  reluctantly  went  on,  regretting  every  step  that  took 
him  from  her.  But  as  he  reached  the  next  corner  his 
shoulders  snapped  back  into  defiant  straightness,  he  thrust 
his  hands  into  the  side  pockets  of  his  top-coat,  and  strode 
away,  feeling  that  he  had  shaken  off  a  burden  of  "nice- 
ness."  He  had,  willy-nilly,  recovered  his  freedom.  He 
could  go  anywhere,  now;  mingle  with  any  sort  of  people; 
be  common  and  comfortable.  He  didn't  have  to  take 
dancing  lessons  or  fear  the  results  of  losing  his  job,  or  of 
being  robbed  of  his  interests  in  the  Touricar.  He  glanced 
interestedly  at  a  pretty  girl;  recklessly  went  into  a  cigar- 
store  and  bought  a  fifteen-cent  cigar.  He  was  free  again. 

As  he  marched  on,  however,  his  defiance  began  to  ooze 
away.  He  went  over  every  word  Ruth  or  he  had  said, 
and  when  he  reached  his  room  he  sat  deep  in  an  arm- 
chair, like  a  hurt  animal  crouching,  his  coat  still  on,  his 
felt  hat  over  his  eyes,  his  tie  a  trifle  disarranged,  his  legs 
straight  out  before  him,  his  hands  in  his  trousers  pockets, 
while  he  disconsolately  contemplated  a  photograph  of 
Forrest  Haviland  in  full-dress  uniform  that  stood  on  the 
low  bureau  among  tangled  ties,  stray  cigarettes,  a  bronze 
aviation  medal,  cuff-buttons,  and  a  haberdasher's  round 
package  of  new  collars.  His  gaze  was  steady  and  gloomy. 
He  was  dramatizing  himself  as  hero  in  a  melodrama.  He 
did  not  know  how  the  play  would  end. 

But  his  dramatization  of  himself  did  not  indicate  that 
he  was  not  in  earnest. 

Forrest's  portrait  suggested  to  him,  as  it  had  before, 
that  he  had  no  picture  of  Ruth,  that  he  wanted  one. 

329 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Next  time  he  saw  her  he  would  ask  her.  .  .  .  Then  he 
remembered. 

He  took  out  his  new  cigar,  turned  it  over  and  over 
gloweringly,  and  chewed  it  without  lighting  it,  the  right 
corner  of  his  mouth  vicious  in  appearance.  But  his  tone 
was  plaintive  as  he  mourned,  "How  did  it  all  start,  any- 
way?" 

He  drew  off  his  top-coat  and  shoes,  and  put  on  his  shabby 
though  once  expensive  slippers.  Slowly.  He  lay  on  his 
bed.  He  certainly  did  not  intend  to  go  to  sleep — but  he 
awoke  at  2  A.M.,  dressed,  the  light  burning,  his  windows 
closed,  feeling  sweaty  and  hot  and  dirty  and  dry-mouthed 
— a  victim  of  all  the  woes  since  tall  Troy  burned.  He 
shucked  off  his  clothes  as  you  shuck  an  ear  of  corn. 

When  he  awoke  in  the  morning  he  lay  as  usual,  greeting 
a  shining  new  day,  till  he  realized  that  it  was  not  a  shining 
day;  it  was  an  ominous  day;  everything  was  wrong. 
That  something  had  happened — really  had — was  a  fact 
that  sternly  patrolled  his  room.  His  chief  reaction  was 
not  repentance  nor  dramatic  interest,  but  a  vexed  longing 
to  unwish  the  whole  affair.  "Hang  it!"  he  groaned. 

Already  he  was  eager  to  make  peace.  He  sympathized 
with  Ruth.  "  Poor  kid !  it  was  rotten  to  row  with  her,  her 
completely  all  in  with  the  grippe." 

At  three  in  the  afternoon  he  telephoned  to  her  house. 
"Miss  Ruth,"  he  was  informed,  "was  asleep;  she  was  not 
very  well." 

Would  the  maid  please  ask  Miss  Ruth  to  call  Mr.  Eric- 
son  when  she  woke? 

Certainly  the  maid  would. 

But  by  bedtime  Ruth  had  not  telephoned.  Self-respect 
would  not  let  him  call  again,  for  days,  and  Ruth  never 
called  him. 

He  went  about  alternately  resentful  at  her  stubborn- 
ness and  seeing  himself  as  a  lout  cast  out  of  heaven.  Then 
he  saw  her  at  a  distance,  on  the  platform  of  the  subway 
station  at  Seventy-second  Street.  She  was  with  Phil 

330 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Dunleavy.  She  looked  well,  she  was  talking  gaily,  ob- 
livious of  old  sorrows,  certainly  not  in  need  of  Carl  Eric- 
son. 

That  was  the  end,  he  knew.  He  watched  them  take  a 
train;  stood  there  alone,  due  at  a  meeting  of  the  Aero- 
nautical Society,  but  suddenly  not  wishing  to  go,  not  wish- 
ing to  go  anywhere  nor  do  anything,  friendless,  bored, 
driftwood  in  the  city. 

So  easily  had  the  Hawk  swooped  down  into  her  life, 
coming  by  chance,  but  glad  to  remain.  So  easily  had  he 
been  driven  away. 

For  three  days  he  planned  in  a  headachy  way  to  make 
an  end  of  his  job  and  join  Bagby,  Jr.,  in  his  hydroaero- 
plane experiments.  He  pictured  the  crowd  that  would 
worship  him.  He  told  himself  stories  unhappy  and  long 
about  the  renewed  companionship  of  Ruth  and  Phil. 
He  was  sure  that  he,  the  stranger,  had  been  a  fool  to 
imagine  that  he  could  ever  displace  Phil.  On  the  third 
afternoon,  suddenly,  apparently  without  cause,  he  bolted 
from  the  office,  and  at  a  public  telephone-booth  he  called 
Ruth.  It  was  she  who  answered  the  telephone. 

"May  I  come  up  to-night?"  he  said,  urgently. 

"Yes,"  she  said.    That  was  all. 

When  he  saw  her,  she  hesitated,  smiled  shamefacedly, 
and  confessed  that  she  had  wanted  to  telephone  to  him. 

Together,  like  a  stage  chorus,  they  contested: 

"I  was  grouchy " 

"I  was  beastly " 

"I'm  honestly  sorry " 

"'11  you  forgive " 

"What  was  it  all  about?" 

"Really,  I  do— not— know !" 

"I  agree  with  lots  of  the  things  you " 

"No,  I  agree  with  you,  but  just  at  the  time — you 
know." 

Her  lively,  defensive  eye«  were  tender.  He  put  his 
22  331 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

arm  lightly  about  her  shoulders — lightly,  but  his  finger- 
tips were  sensitive  to  every  thread  of  her  thin  bodice 
that  seemed  tissue  as  warmly  living  as  the  smooth  shoul- 
der beneath.  She  pressed  her  eyes  against  his  coat,  her 
coiled  dark  hair  beneath  his  chin.  A  longing  to  cry  like 
a  boy,  and  to  care  for  her  like  a  man,  made  him  reverent. 
The  fear  of  Phil  vanished.  Intensely  conscious  though 
he  was  of  her  hair  and  its  individual  scent,  he  did  not  kiss 
it.  She  was  sacred. 

She  sprang  from  him,  and  at  the  piano  hammered  out 
a  rattling  waltz.  It  changed  to  gentler  music,  and  under 
the  shaded  piano-lamp  they  were  silent,  happy.  He 
merely  touched  her  hand,  when  he  went,  but  he  sang  his 
way  home,  wanting  to  nod  to  every  policeman. 

"I've  found  her  again;  it  isn't  merely  play,  now!"  he 
kept  repeating.  "And  I've  learned  something.  I  don't 
really  know  what  it  is,  but  it's  as  though  I'd  learned  a 
new  language.  Gee!  I'm  happy!" 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

ON  an  April  Saturday  morning  Carl  rose  with  a  feel- 
ing of  spring.  He  wanted  to  be  off  in  the  Connecti- 
cut hills,  among  the  silvery-gray  worm-fences,  with  larks 
rising  on  the  breeze  and  pools  a-ripple  and  yellow  crocus- 
blossoms  afire  by  the  road,  where  towns  white  and  sleepy 
woke  to  find  the  elms  misted  with  young  green.  Would 
there  be  any  crocuses  out  as  yet?  That  was  the  only 
question  worth  solving  in  the  world,  save  the  riddle  of 
Ruth's  heart.  The  staid  brownstone  houses  of  the  New 
York  streets  displayed  few  crocuses  and  fewer  larks,  yet 
over  them  to-day  was  the  bloom  of  romance.  Carl 
walked  down  to  the  automobile  district  past  Central 
Park,  sniffing  wistfully  at  the  damp  grass,  pale  green  amid 
old  gray;  marveling  how  a  bare  patch  of  brown  earth, 
without  a  single  blade  of  grass,  could  smell  so  stirringly 
of  coming  spring.  A  girl  on  Broadway  was  selling  wild 
violets,  white  and  purple,  and  in  front  of  wretched  old 
houses  down  a  side-street,  in  the  negro  district,  a  darky 
in  a  tan  derby  and  a  scarlet  tie  was  caroling: 

"Mandy,  in  de  spring 
De  mocking-birds  do  sing, 
An'  de  flowers  am  so  sweet  along  de  ol'  bayou " 

Above  the  darky's  head,  elevated  trains  roared  on  the 
Fifty-third  Street  trestle,  and  up  Broadway  streaked  a 
stripped  motor-car,  all  steel  chassis  and  grease-mottled 
board  seat  and  lurid  odor  of  gasoline.  But  sparrows 
splashed  in  the  pools  of  sunshine;  in  a  lull  the  darky's 
voice  came  again,  chanting  passionately,  "In  de  spring, 

333 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

spring,  spring!"  and  Carl  clamored:  "I've  got  to  get  out 
to-day.  Terrible  glad  it's  a  half-holiday.  Wonder  if  I 
dare  telephone  to  Ruth?" 

At  a  quarter  to  three  they  were  rollicking  down  the 
"smart  side"  of  Fifth  Avenue.  One  could  see  that  they 
were  playmates,  by  her  dancing  steps  and  his  absorption 
in  her.  He  bent  a  little  toward  her,  quick  to  laugh  with 
her. 

Ruth  was  in  a  frock  of  flowered  taffeta.  "I  won't  wait 
till  Easter  to  show  off  my  spring  clothes.  It  isn't  done 
any  more,"  she  said.  "It's  as  stupid  as  Bobby's  not  dar- 
ing to  wear  a  straw  hat  one  single  day  after  September 
fifteenth.  Is  an  aviator  brave  enough  to  wear  his  after 
the  fifteenth?  .  .  .  Think!  I  didn't  know  you  then — last 
September.  I  can't  understand  it." 

"But  I  knew  you,  blessed,  because  I  was  sure  spring 
was  coming  again,  and  that  distinctly  implied  Ruth." 

"Of  course  it  did.  You've  guessed  my  secret.  I'm 
the  Spirit  of  Spring.  Last  Wednesday,  when  I  lost  my 

marquise  ring,  I  was  the  spirit  of  vitriol,  but  now I'm 

a  poet.  I've  thought  it  all  out  and  decided  that  I  shall 
be  the  American  Sappho.  At  any  moment  I  am  quite 
likely  to  rush  madly  across  the  pavement  and  sit  down 
on  the  curb  and  indite  several  stanzas  on  the  back  of  a 
calling-card,  while  the  crowd  galumps  around  me  in  an 
awed  ring.  ...  I  feel  like  kidnapping  you  and  making 
you  take  me  aeroplaning,  but  I'll  compromise.  You're 
to  buy  me  a  book  and  take  me  down  to  the  Maison  fipinay 
for  tea,  and  read  me  poetry  while  I  yearn  over  the  window- 
boxes  and  try  to  look  like  Nicollette.  Buy  me  a  book 
with  spring  in  it,  and  a  princess,  and  a  sky  like  this — 
corn-flower  blue  with  bunny-rabbit  clouds." 

At  least  a  few  in  the  Avenue's  flower-garden  of  pretty 
debutantes  in  pairs  and  young  university  men  with  ex- 
pensive leather-laced  tan  boots  were  echoing  Ruth  in 
gay,  new  clothes. 

"I  wonder  who  they  all  are;  they  look  like  an  aristoc- 

334 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

racy,  useless  but  made  of  the  very  best  materials,"  said 
Carl. 

"They're  like  maids  of  honor  and  young  knights,  dis- 
guised in  modern  costumes!  They're  charming!" 

"Charmingly  useless,"  insisted  our  revolutionary,  but 
he  did  not  sound  earnest.  It  was  too  great  a  day  for 
earnestness  about  anything  less  great  than  joy  and  life; 
a  day  for  shameless  luxuriating  in  the  sun,  and  for  wear- 
ing bright  things.  In  shop  windows  with  curtains  of 
fluted  silk  were  silver  things  and  jade;  satin  gowns  and 
shoe  -  buckles  of  rhinestones.  The  sleek  motor  -  cars 
whisked  by  in  an  incessant  line;  the  traffic  policemen 
nodded  familiarly  to  hansom -drivers;  pools  on  the  as- 
phalt mirrored  the  delicate  sky,  and  at  every  corner 
the  breeze  tasted  of  spring. 

Carl  bought  for  her  Yeats's  poems,  tucked  it  under  his 
arm,  and  they  trotted  off.  In  Madison  Square  they  saw 
a  gallant  and  courtly  old  man  with  military  shoulders  and 
pink  cheeks,  a  debonair  gray  mustache,  and  a  smile  of 
unquenchable  youth,  greeting  April  with  a  narcissus  in 
his  buttonhole.  He  was  feeding  the  sparrows  with 
crumbs  and  smiled  to  see  one  of  them  fly  off,  carrying  a 
long  wisp  of  hay,  bustling  away  to  build  for  himself  and 
his  sparrow  bride  a  bungalow  in  the  foot-hills  of  the  Met- 
ropolitan Tower. 

"I  love  that  old  man!"  exclaimed  Ruth.  "I  do  wish 
we  could  pick  him  up  and  take  him  with  us.  I  dare  you 
to  go  over  and  say,  '  I  prithee,  sir,  of  thy  good  will  come 
thou  forthfaring  with  two  vagabonds  who  do  quest  high 
and  low  the  land  of  Nowhere.'  Something  like  that. 
Go  on,  Carl,  be  brave.  Pretend  you're  brave  as  an 
aviator.  Perhaps  he  has  a  map  of  Arcadia.  Go  ask 
him." 

"Afraid   to.     Besides,  he  might  monopolize  you." 

"He'll  go  with  us,  without  his  knowing  it,  anyway. 
Isn't  it  strange  how  you  know  people,  perfect  strangers, 
from  seeing  them  once,  without  even  speaking  to  them? 

335 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

You  know  them  the  rest  of  your  life  and  play  games  with 
them." 

The  Maison  Epinay  you  must  quest  long,  but  great  is 
your  reward  if  you  find  it.  Here  is  no  weak  remembrance 
of  a  lost  Paris,  but  a  French-Canadian's  desire  to  express 
what  he  believes  Paris  must  be;  therefore  a  super-Paris, 
all  in  brown  velvet  and  wicker  tables,  and  at  the  back  a 
long  window  edged  with  boxes  red  with  geraniums,  look- 
ing to  a  back-yard  garden  where  rose-beds  lead  to  a  danc- 
ing-faun terminal  in  a  shrine  of  ivy. 

They  sipped  grenadine,  heavy  essence  of  a  thousand 
berries.  They  had  the  place  to  themselves,  save  for 
Tony  the  waiter,  with  his  smile  of  benison;  and  Carl  read 
from  Yeats. 

He  had  heard  of  Yeats  at  Plato,  but  never  had  he 
known  crying  curlew  and  misty  mere  and  the  flutter- 
ing wings  of  Love  till  now. 

His  hand  rested  on  her  gloved  hand.  .  .  .  Tony  the 
waiter  re-re-rearranged  the  serving-table.  .  .  .  When  Ruth 
broke  the  spell  with,  "You  aren't  very  reverent  with  per- 
fectly clean  gloves,"  they  chattered  like  blackbirds  at 
sunset. 

Carl  discovered  that,  being  a  New-Yorker,  she  knew 
part  of  it  as  intimately  as  though  it  were  a  village,  and 
nothing  about  the  rest.  She  had  taught  him  Fifth 
Avenue;  told  him  the  history  of  the  invasion  by  shops, 
the  social  differences  between  East  and  West;  pointed 
out  the  pictures  of  friends  in  photographers'  wall-cases. 
Now  he  taught  her  the  various  New  Yorks  he  had  dis- 
covered in  lonely  rambles.  Together  they  explored 
Chelsea  Village  section,  and  the  Oxford  quadrangles  of 
General  Theological  Seminary,  where  quiet  meditation 
dwells  in  Tudor  corridors;  upper  Greenwich  Village,  the 
home  of  Italian  tables  d'hote,  clerks,  social-workers,  and 
radical  magazines,  of  alley  rookeries  and  the  ancient  Jew- 
ish burying-ground ;  lower  Greenwich  Village,  where  run- 
down American  families  with  Italian  lodgers  live  on  streets 

336 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

named  for  kings,  in  wooden  houses  with  gambrel  roofs  and 
colonial  fanlights.  From  the  same  small-paned  windows 
where  frowsy  Italian  women  stared  down  upon  Ruth, 
Ruth's  ancestors  had  leaned  out  to  greet  General 
George  Washington. 

On  an  open  wharf  near  Tenth  Street  they  were  be- 
spelled  by  April.  The  Woolworth  Tower,  to  the  south, 
was  an  immortal  shaft  of  ivory  and  gold  against  an  un- 
winking blue  sky,  challenging  the  castles  and  cathedrals 
of  the  Old  World,  and  with  its  supreme  art  dignifying  the 
commerce  which  built  and  uses  it.  The  Hudson  was 
lustrous  with  sun,  and  a  sweet  wind  sang  from  unknown 
Jersey  hills  across  the  river.  Moored  to  the  wharf  was 
a  coal-barge,  with  a  tiny  dwelling-cabin  at  whose  windows 
white  curtains  fluttered.  Beside  the  cabin  was  a  garden 
tended  by  the  bargeman's  comely  white-browed  wife;  a 
dozen  daisies  and  geraniums  in  two  starch-boxes. 

Forging  down  the  river  a  scarred  tramp  steamer,  whose 
rusty  sides  the  sun  turned  to  damask  rose,  bobbed  in  the 
slight  swell,  heading  for  open  sea,  with  the  British  flag 
a-flicker  and  men  chanting  as  they  cleared  deck. 

"I  wish  we  were  going  off  with  her — maybe  to  Singa- 
pore or  Nagasaki,"  Carl  said,  slipping  his  arm  through 
hers,  as  they  balanced  on  the  stringpiece  of  the  wharf, 
sniffing  like  deer  at  the  breeze,  which  for  a  moment  seemed 
to  bear,  from  distant  bourgeoning  woods,  a  shadowy  hint 
of  burning  leaves — the  perfume  of  spring  and  autumn, 
the  eternal  wander-call. 

"Yes!"  Ruth  mused;  "and  moonlight  in  Java,  and  the 
Himalayas  on  the  horizon,  and  the  Vale  of  Cashmir." 

"But  I'm  glad  we  have  this.  Blessed,  it's  a  day 
planned  for  lovers  like  us." 

"Carl!" 

"  Yes.    Lovers.    Courting.    In  spring.    Like  all  lovers." 

"Really,  Carl,  even  spring  doesn't  quite  let  me  forget 
the  convenances  are  home  waiting." 

"We're  not  lovers?" 

337 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"No,  we " 

"Yet  you  enjoy  to-day,  don't  you?" 

"Yes,  but " 

"And  you'd  rather  be  loafing  on  a  dirty  wharf,  looking 
at  a  tramp  steamer,  than  taking  tea  at  the  Plaza?" 
"Yes,  just  now,  perhaps " 

"And  you're  protesting  because  you  feel  it's  proper 
. »> 

"It " 

"And  you  really  trust  me  so  much  that  you're  having 
difficulty  in  seeming  alarmed?" 

"Really " 

"And  you'd  rather  play  around  with  me  than  any  of 
the  Skull  and  Bones  or  Hasty  Pudding  men  you  know? 
Or  foreign  diplomats  with  spade  beards?" 

"At  least  they  wouldn't " 

"Oh  yes  they  would,  if  you'd  let  them,  which  you 
wouldn't.  .  .  .  So,  to  sum  up,  then,  we  are  lovers  and  it's 
spring  and  you're  glad  of  it,  and  as  soon  as  you  get  used 
to  it  you'll  be  glad  I'm  so  frank.  Won't  you?" 

"I  will  not  be  bullied,  Carl!  You'll  be  having  me  mar- 
ried to  you  before  I  can  scream  for  help,  if  I  don't  start 
at  once." 

"Probably." 

"Indeed  you  will  not!  I  haven't  the  slightest  intention 
of  letting  you  get  away  with  being  masterful." 

"Yes,  I  know,  blessed;  these  masterful  people  bore 
me,  too.  But  aren't  we  modern  enough  so  we  can  dis- 
cuss frankly  the  question  of  whether  I'd  better  propose 
to  you,  some  day?" 

"  But,  boy,  what  makes  you  suppose  that  I  have  any 
information  on  the  subject?  That  I've  ever  thought  of 
it?" 

"I  credit  you  with  having  a  reasonable  knowledge  that 
there  are  such  things  as  marriage." 

"Yes,  but Oh,  I'm  very  confused.  You've  bul- 
lied me  into  such  a  defensive  position  that  my  instinct  is 

338 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

to  deny  everything.  If  you  turned  on  me  suddenly  and 
accused  me  of  wearing  gloves  I'd  indignantly  deny  it." 

"Meantime,  not  to  change  the  subject,  I'd  better  be 
planning  and  watching  for  a  suitable  day  for  proposing, 
don't  you  think?  Consider  it.  Here's  this  young  Eric- 
son — some  sort  of  a  clerk,  I  believe — no,  don't  think  he's 

a  university  man You  know;  discuss  it  clearly. 

Think  it  might  be  better  to  propose  to-day?  I  ask  your 
advice  as  a  woman." 

"Oh,  Carl  dear,  I  think  not  to-day.  I'm  sorry,  but  I 
really  don't  think  so." 

"But  some  time,  perhaps?" 

"Some  time,  perhaps!"  Then  she  fled  from  him  and 
from  the  subject. 

They  talked,  after  that,  only  of  the  sailors  that  loafed 
on  West  Street,  but  in  their  voices  was  content. 

They  crossed  the  city,  and  on  Brooklyn  Bridge  watched 
the  suburbanites  going  home,  crowding  surface-car  and 
elevated.  From  their  perch  on  the  giant  spider's  web  of 
steel,  they  saw  the  Long  Island  Sound  steamers  below 
them,  passing  through  a  maelstrom  of  light  on  waves 
that  trembled  like  quicksilver. 

They  found  a  small  Italian  restaurant,  free  of  local-color 
hounds  and  what  Carl  called  "hobohemians,"  and  dis- 
covered fritto  misto  and  Chianti  and  zabaglione — a  pale- 
brown  custard  flavored  like  honey  and  served  in  tall,  thin, 
curving  glasses — while  the  fat  proprietress,  in  a  red  shawl 
and  a  large  brooch,  came  to  ask  them,  "Everyt'ing  ail- 
aright,  eh  ?"  Carl  insisted  that  Walter  MacMonnies,  the 
aviator,  had  once  tried  out  a  motor  that  was  exactly  like 
her,  including  the  Italian  accent.  There  was  simple  and 
complete  bliss  for  them  in  the  dingy  pine-and-plaster 
room,  adorned  with  fly-specked  calendars  and  pictures  of 
Victor  Emmanuel  and  President  McKinley,  copies  of  the 
Bolletino  Delia  Sera  and  large  vinegar  bottles. 

The  theater  was  their  destination,  but  they  first  loitered 
up  Broadway,  shamelessly  stopping  to  stare  at  shop 

339 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

windows,  pretending  to  be  Joe  the  shoe-clerk  and  Becky 
the  cashier  furnishing  a  Bronx  flat.  Whether  it  was  any- 
thing but  a  game  to  Ruth  will  never  be  known;  but  to 
Carl  there  was  a  hidden  high  excitement  in  planning  a 
flower-box  for  the  fire-escape. 

Apropos  of  nothing,  she  said,  as  they  touched  elbows 
with  the  sweethearting  crowd:  "You  were  right.  I'm 
sorry  I  ever  felt  superior  to  what  I  called  *  common  peo- 
ple.' People!  I  love  them  all.  It's Come,  we 

must  hurry.  I  hate  to  miss  that  one  perfect  second  when 
the  orchestra  is  quiet  and  the  lights  wink  at  you  and  the 
curtain  's  going  up." 

During  the  second  act  of  the  play,  when  the  heroine 
awoke  to  love,  Carl's  hand  found  hers. 

And  it  must  have  been  that  night  when,  standing  be- 
tween the  inner  and  outer  doors  of  her  house,  Carl  put 
his  arms  about  her,  kissed  her  hair,  timidly  kissed  her 
sweet,  cold  cheek,  and  cried,  "  Bless  you,  dear."  But,  for 
some  reason,  he  does  not  remember  when  he  did  first  kiss 
her,  though  he  had  looked  forward  to  that  miracle  for 
weeks.  He  does  not  understand  the  reason;  but  there 
is  the  fact.  Her  kisses  were  big  things  to  him,  yet  pos- 
sibly there  were  larger  psychological  changes  which 
occulted  everything  else,  at  first.  But  it  must  have  been 
on  that  night  that  he  first  kissed  her.  For  certainly  it 
was  when  he  called  on  her  a  week  later  that  he  kissed 
her  for  the  second  time. 

They  had  been  animated  but  decorous,  that  evening  a 
week  later.  He  had  tried  to  play  an  improvisation  called 
"The  Battle  of  San  Juan  Hill,"  with  a  knowledge  of  the 
piano  limited  to  the  fact  that  if  you  struck  alternate  keys 
at  the  same  time,  there  appeared  not  to  be  a  discord. 

"I  must  go  now,"  he  said,  slowly,  as  though  the  bald 
words  had  a  higher  significance.  She  tried  to  look  at 
him,  and  could  not.  His  arms  circled  her,  with  frightened 
happiness.  She  tilted  back  her  head,  and  there  was  the 
ever-new  surprise  of  blue  irises  under  dark  brows.  Up- 

340 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

lifted  wonder  her  eyes  spoke.  His  head  drooped  till  he 
kissed  her  lips.  The  two  bodies  clamored  for  each  other. 
But  she  unwound  his  arms,  crying,  "No,  no,  no!" 

He  was  enfolded  by  a  sensation  that  they  had  instantly 
changed  from  friendly  strangers  to  intimate  lovers,  as 
she  said:  "I  don't  understand  it,  Carl.  I've  never  let 
a  man  kiss  me  like  that.  Oh,  I  suppose  I've  flirted,  like 
most  girls,  and  been  kissed  sketchily  at  silly  dances.  But 

this Oh,  Carl,  Carl  dear,  don't  ever  kiss  me  again 

till — oh,  not  till  I  know.  Why,  I'm  scarcely  acquainted 
with  you!  I  do  know  how  dear  you  are,  but  it  appals 
me  when  I  think  of  how  little  background  you  have  for 
me.  Dear,  I  don't  want  to  be  sordid  and  spoil  this  mo- 
ment, but  I  do  know  that  when  you're  gone  I'll  be  a  cow- 
ard and  remember  that  there  are  families  and  things,  and 
want  to  wait  till  I  know  how  they  like  you,  at  the  very 
least.  Good  night,  and  I " 

"Good  night,  dear  blessed.     I  know." 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

THERE  were,  as  Ruth  had  remarked,  families. 
When  Carl  was  formally  invited  to  dine  at  the 
Winslows',  on  a  night  late  in  April,  his  only  anxiety  was 
as  to  the  condition  of  his  dinner-coat.  He  arrived  in  a 
state  of  easy  briskness,  planning  apt  and  sensible  remarks 
about  the  business  situation  for  Mason  and  Mr.  Winslow. 
As  the  maid  opened  the  door  Carl  was  wondering  if  he 
would  be  able  to  touch  Ruth's  hand  under  the  table. 
He  had  an  anticipatory  fondness  for  all  of  the  small 
friendly  family  group  which  was  about  to  receive  him. 

And  he  was  cast  into  a  den  of  strangers,  most  of  them 
comprised  in  the  one  electric  person  of  Aunt  Emma 
Truegate  Winslow. 

Aunt  Emma  Truegate  Winslow  was  the  general-com- 
manding in  whatsoever  group  she  was  placed  by  Provi- 
dence (with  which  she  had  strong  influence).  At  a  White 
House  reception  she  would  pleasantly  but  firmly  have 
sent  the  President  about  his  business,  and  have  taken  his 
place  in  the  receiving  line.  Just  now  she  sat  in  a  pre- 
historic S  chair,  near  the  center  of  the  drawing-room, 
pumping  out  of  Phil  Dunleavy  most  of  the  facts  about  his 
chiefs'  private  lives. 

Aunt  Emma  had  the  soul  of  a  six-foot  dowager  duchess, 
and  should  have  had  an  eagle  nose  and  a  white  pompadour. 
Actually,  she  was  of  medium  height,  with  a  not  unduly 
maternal  bosom,  a  broad,  commonplace  face,  hair  the 
color  of  faded  grass,  a  blunt  nose  with  slightly  enlarged 
pores,  and  thin  lips  that  seemed  to  be  a  straight  line  when 
seen  from  in  front,  but,  seen  in  profile,  puffed  out  like  a 

34* 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

fish's.  She  had  a  habit  of  nodding  intelligently  even 
when  she  was  not  listening,  and  another  habit  of  rubbing 
her  left  knuckles  with  the  fingers  of  her  right  hand.  Not 
imposing  in  appearance  was  Aunt  Emma  Truegate  Win- 
slow,  but  she  was  born  to  discipline  a  court. 

An  impeccable  widow  was  she,  speaking  with  a  broad 
A,  and  dressed  exquisitely  in  a  black  satin  evening  gown. 

By  such  simple-hearted  traits  as  being  always  right 
about  unimportant  matters  and  idealistically  wrong  about 
important  matters,  politely  intruding  into  everything, 
being  earnest  about  the  morality  of  the  poor  and  auction 
bridge  and  the  chaperonage  of  nice  girls,  possessing  a 
working  knowledge  of  Wagner  and  Rodin,  wearing 
fifteen-dollar  corsets,  and  believing  on  her  bended  knees 
that  the  Truegates  and  Winslows  were  the  noblest  families 
in  the  Social  Register,  Aunt  Emma  Truegate  Winslow 
had  persuaded  the  whole  world,  including  even  her  near- 
English  butler,  that  she  was  a  superior  woman.  Family 
tradition  said  that  she  had  only  to  raise  a  finger  to  get 
into  really  smart  society.  Upon  the  death  of  Ruth's 
mother,  Aunt  Emma  had  taken  it  as  one  of  her  duties, 
along  with  symphony  concerts  and  committees,  to  rear 
Ruth  properly.  She  had  been  neglecting  this  duty  so  far 
as  to  permit  the  invasion  of  a  barbarian  named  Ericson 
only  because  she  had  been  in  California  with  her  young 
son,  Arthur.  Just  now,  while  her  house  was  being  opened, 
she  was  staying  at  the  Winslows',  with  Arthur  and  a 
peculiarly  beastly  Japanese  spaniel  named  Taka-San. 

She  was  introduced  at  Carl,  she  glanced  him  over,  and 
passed  him  on  to  Olive  Dunleavy,  all  in  forty-five  seconds. 
When  Carl  had  recovered  from  a  sensation  of  being  a 
kitten  drowned  in  a  sack,  he  said  agreeable  things  to 
Olive,  and  observed  the  situation  in  the  drawing-room. 

Phil  was  marked  out  for  Aunt  Emma's  favors;  Mr. 
Winslow  sat  in  a  corner,  apparently  crushed,  with  restora- 
tive conversation  administered  by  Ruth;  Mason  Winslow 
was  haltingly  attentive  to  a  plain,  well-dressed,  amiable 

343 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

girl  named  Florence  Crewden,  who  had  prematurely  gray 
hair,  the  week-end  habit,  and  a  weakness  for  baby  talk. 
Ruth's  medical-student  brother,  Bobby  Winslow,  was  not 
there.  The  more  he  saw  of  Bobby's  kind  Aunt  Emma, 
the  more  Carl  could  find  it  in  his  heart  to  excuse  Bobby 
for  having  escaped  the  family  dinner. 

Carl  had  an  uncomfortable  moment  when  Aunt  Emma 
and  Mr.  Winslow  asked  him  questions  about  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Touricar.  But  before  he  could  determine 
whether  he  was  being  deliberately  inspected  by  the  family 
the  ordeal  was  over. 

As  they  went  in  to  dinner,  Mr.  Winslow  taking  in  Aunt 
Emma  like  a  small  boy  accompanying  the  school  prin- 
cipal, Ruth  had  the  chance  to  whisper:  "My  Hawk,  be 
good.  Please  believe  I'm  not  responsible.  It's  all  Aunt 
Emma's  doing,  this  dreadfully  stately  family  dinner. 

Don't  let  her  bully  you.  I'm  frightened  to  death  and 

Yes,  Phil,  I'm  coming." 

The  warning  did  not  seem  justified  in  view  of  the  at- 
tractive table — candles,  cut  glass,  a  mound  of  flowers  on 
a  beveled  mirror,  silvery  linen,  and  grape-fruit  with 
champagne.  Carl  was  at  one  side  of  Aunt  Emma,  but 
she  seemed  more  interested  in  Mr.  Winslow,  at  the  end 
of  the  table;  and  on  his  other  side  Carl  had  a  safe  com- 
panion in  Olive  Dunleavy.  Across  from  him  were  Flo- 
rence Crewden,  Phil,  and  Ruth — Ruth  shimmering  in  a 
gown  of  yellow  satin,  which  broke  the  curves  of  her  fine, 
flushed  shoulders  only  by  a  narrow  band. 

The  conversation  played  with  people.  Florence  Crew- 
den told,  to  applause  and  laughter,  of  an  exploratory  visit 
to  the  College  of  the  City  of  New  York,  and  her  discov- 
ery of  a  strange  race,  young  Jews  mostly,  who  went  to 
college  to  study,  and  had  no  sense  of  the  nobility  of 
"making"  fraternities. 

"Such  outsiders!"  she  said.  "Can't  you  imagine  the 
sort  of  a  party  they'd  have — they'd  all  stand  around  and 
discuss  psychology  and  dissecting  puppies  and  Greek 

344 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

roots!  Phil,  I  think  it  would  be  a  lovely  punishment  for 
you  to  have  to  join  them — to  work  in  a  laboratory  all  day 
and  wear  a  celluloid  collar." 

"Oh,  I  know  their  sort;  'greasy  grinds'  we  used  to  call 
them;  there  were  plenty  of  them  in  Yale,"  condescended 
Phil. 

"Maybe  they  wear  celluloid  collars — if  they  do — be- 
cause they're  poor,"  protested  Ruth. 

"My  dear  child,"  sniffed  Aunt  Emma,  "with  collars 
only  twenty-five  cents  apiece?  Don't  be  silly!" 

Mr.  Winslow  declared,  with  portly  timidity,  "Why, 
Em,  my  collars  don't  cost  me  but  fifteen " 

"Mason  dear,  let's  not  discuss  it  at  dinner.  .  .  .  Tell 
me,  all  of  you,  the  scandal  I've  missed  by  going  to  Cali- 
fornia. Which  reminds  me;  did  I  tell  you  I  saw  that 
miserable  Amy  Baslin,  you  remember,  that  married  the 
porter  or  the  superintendent  or  something  in  her  father's 
factory?  I  saw  her  and  her  husband  at  Pasadena,  and 
they  seemed  to  be  happy.  Of  course  Amy  would  put  the 
best  face  she  could  on  it,  but  they  must  have  been  miser- 
ably unhappy — such  a  sad  affair,  and  she  could  have 
married  quite  decently." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  'decently'?"  Ruth  demanded. 

Carl  was  startled.  He  had  once  asked  Ruth  the  same 
question  about  the  same  phrase. 

Aunt  Emma  revolved  like  a  gun-turret  getting  Ruth's 
range,  and  remarked,  calmly:  "My  dear  child,  you  know 
quite  well  what  I  mean.  Don't,  I  beg  of  you,  bring  any 
socialistic  problems  to  dinner  till  you  have  really  learned 
something  about  them.  .  .  .  Now  I  want  to  hear  all  the 
nice  scandals  I  have  missed." 

There  were  not  many  she  had  missed;  but  she  kept 
the  conversation  sternly  to  discussions  of  people  whose 
names  Carl  had  never  heard.  Again  he  was  obviously 
an  Outsider.  Still  ignoring  Carl,  Aunt  Emma  demanded 
of  Ruth  and  Phil,  sitting  together  opposite  her: 

"Tell  me  about  the  good  times  you  children  have  been 

345 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

having,  Ruthie.  I  am  so  glad  that  Phil  and  you  finally 
went  to  the  William  Truegates'.  And  your  letter  about 
the  Beaux  Arts  festival  was  charming,  Ruthie.  I  quite 
envied  you  and  Phil." 

The  dragon  continued  talking  to  Ruth,  while  Carl 
listened,  in  the  interstices  of  his  chatter  to  Olive: 

"I  hope  you  haven't  been  giving  all  your  time  and 
beauty-sleep  doing  too  much  of  that  settlement  work, 
Ruthie — and  Heaven  only  knows  what  germs  you  will 
get  there — of  course  I  should  be  the  first  to  praise  any 
work  for  the  poor,  ungrateful  and  shiftless  though  they 
are — what  with  my  committees  and  the  Truegate  Tem- 
perance Home  for  Young  Working  Girls — it's  all  very 
well  to  be  sympathetic  with  them,  but  when  it  comes  to 
a  settlement-house,  and  Heaven  knows  I  have  given  them 
all  the  counsel  and  suggestions  I  could,  though  some  of 
the  professional  settlement  workers  are  as  pert  as  they 
can  be,  and  I  really  do  believe  some  of  them  think  they 
are  trying  to  end  poverty  entirely,  just  as  though  the 
Lord  would  have  sent  poverty  into  the  world  if  He  didn't 
have  a  very  good  reason  for  it — you  will  remember  the 
Bible  says,  'The  poor  you  always  have  with  you,'  and  as 
Florence  Barclay  says  in  her  novels,  which  may  seem 
a  little  sentimental,  but  they  are  of  such  a  good  moral 
effect,  you  can't  supersede  the  Scriptures  even  in  the  most 
charming  social  circles.  To  say  nothing  of  the  blessings 
of  poverty,  I'm  sure  they're  much  happier  than  we  are, 
with  our  onerous  duties,  I'm  sure  that  if  any  of  these 
ragamuffin  anarchists  and  socialists  and  anti-militarists 
want  to  take  over  my  committees  they  are  welcome,  if 
they'll  take  over  the  miserable  headaches  and  worried 
hours  they  give  me,  trying  to  do  something  for  the  poor, 
they  won't  even  be  clean  but  even  in  model  tenements 
they  will  put  coal  in  the  bath-tubs.  And  so  I  do  hope 
you  haven't  just  been  wearing  yourself  to  a  bone  working 
ifor  ungrateful  dirty  little  children,  Ruthie." 

"No,  auntie  dear,  I've  been  quite  as  discreet  as  any 

346 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Winslow  should  be.  You  see,  I'm  selfish,  too.  Aren't 
I,  Carl?" 

"Oh,  very." 

Aunt  Emma  seemed  to  remember,  then,  that  some  sort 
of  a  man,  whose  species  she  didn't  quite  know,  sat  next 
to  her.  She  glanced  at  Carl,  again  gave  him  up  as  an 
error  in  social  judgment,  and  went  on: 

"No,  Ruthie,  not  selfish  so  much  as  thoughtless  about 
the  duties  of  a  family  like  ours — and  I  was  always  the 
first  to  say  that  the  Winslows  are  as  fine  a  stock  as  the 
Truegates.  And  I  am  going  to  see  that  you  go  out  more 
the  rest  of  this  year,  Ruthie.  I  want  you  and  Phil  to 
plan  right  now  to  attend  the  Charity  League  dances  next 
season.  You  must  learn  to  concentrate  your  atten- 
tion  " 

"Auntie  dear,  please  leave  my  wickedness  till  the  next 
time  we " 

"My  dear  child,  now  that  I  have  the  chance  to  get  all 
of  us  together — Pm  sure  Mr.  Ericson  will  pardon  the 
rest  of  us  our  little  family  discussions — I  want  to  take 
you  and  Master  Phil  to  task  together.  You  are  both  of 
you  negligent  of  social  duties — duties  they  are,  Ruthie, 
for  man  was  not  born  to  serve  alone — though  Phil  is  far 
better  than  you,  with  your  queer  habits,  and  Heaven 
only  knows  where  you  got  them,  neither  your  father  nor 
your  dear  sainted  mother  was  slack  or  selfish " 

"Dear  auntie,  let's  admit  that  I'm  a  black  sheep  with 
a  little  black  muzzle  and  a  habit  of  butting  all  sorts  of 
ash-cans;  and  let  Phil  go  on  his  social  way  rejoicing." 

Ruth  was  jaunty,  but  her  voice  was  strained,  and  she 
bit  her  lip  with  staccato  nervousness  when  she  was  not 
speaking.  Carl  ventured  to  face  the  dragon. 

"Mrs.  Winslow,  Pm  sure  Ruth  has  been  better  than 
you  think;  she  has  been  learning  all  these  fiendishly  com- 
plicated new  dances.  You  know  a  poor  business  man  like 
myself  finds  them " 

"Yea,"  said  Aunt  Emma,  "I  am  sure  she  will  always 
23  347 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

remember  that  she  is  a  Winslow,  and  must  carry  on  the 
family  traditions,  but  sometimes  I  am  afraid  she  gets 
under  bad  influences,  because  of  her  good  nature."  She 
said  it  loudly.  She  looked  Carl  in  the  eye. 

The  whole  table  stopped  talking.  Carl  felt  like  a  tramp 
who  has  kicked  a  chained  bulldog  and  discovers  that  the 
chain  is  broken. 

He  wanted  to  be  good;  not  make  a  scene.  He  noticed 
with  intense  indignation  that  Phil  was  grinning.  He 
planned  to  get  Phil  off  in  a  corner,  not  necessarily  a  dark 
corner,  and  beat  him.  He  wanted  to  telegraph  Ruth; 
dared  not.  He  realized,  in  a  quarter-second,  that  he 
must  have  been  discussed  by  the  Family,  and  did  not 
like  it. 

Every  one  seemed  to  be  waiting  for  him  to  speak. 
Awkwardly  he  said,  wondering  all  the  while  if  she  meant 
what  her  tone  said  she  meant,  by  "bad  influences": 

"Yes,  but Just  going  to  say- I  believe  settle- 
ment work  is  a  good  influence — 

"Please  don't  discuss "  Ruth  was  groaning,  when 

Aunt  Emma  sternly  interrupted: 

"It  is  good  of  you  to  take  up  the  cudgels,  Mr.  Ericson, 
and  please  don't  misjudge  me — of  course  I  realize  that  I 
am  only  a  silly  old  woman  and  that  my  passion  to  see 
the  Winslows  keep  to  their  fine  standards  is  old-fashioned, 
but  you  see  it  is  a  hobby  of  mine  that  I've  devoted  years 
to,  and  you  who  haven't  known  the  Winslows  so  very 
long "  Her  manner  was  almost  courteous. 

"Yes,  that's  so,"  Carl  mumbled,  agreeably,  just  as  she 
dropped  the  courtesy  and  went  on: 

" you  can't  judge — in  fact  (this  is  nothing  personal, 

you  know)  I  don't  suppose  it's  possible  for  Westerners  to 
have  any  idea  how  precious  family  ideals  are  to  Easterners. 
Of  course  we' re  probably  silly  about  them,  and  it's  splendid, 
your  wheat-lands,  and  not  caring  who  your  grandfather 
was;  but  to  make  up  for  those  things  we  do  have  to  pro- 
tect what  we  have  gained  through  the  generations." 

348 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Carl  longed  to  stand  up,  to  defy  them  all,  to  cry:  "If 
you  mean  that  you  think  Ruth  has  to  be  protected  against 
me,  have  the  decency  to  say  so."  Yet  he  kept  his  voice 
gentle: 

"  But  why  be  narrowed  to  just  a  few  families  in  one's 
interests?  Now  this  settlement " 

"One  isn't  narrowed.  There  are  plenty  of  good  families 
for  Ruth  to  consider  when  it  comes  time  for  my  little  girl 
to  consider  alliances  at  all!"  Aunt  Emma  coldly  stated. 

"  I  will  shut  up !"  he  told  himself.  "  I  will  shut  up.  I'll 
see  this  dinner  through,  and  then  never  come  near  this 
house  again."  He  tried  to  look  casual,  as  though  the 
conversation  was  safely  finished.  But  Aunt  Emma  was 
waiting  for  him  to  go  on.  In  the  general  stillness  her 
corsets  creaked  with  belligerent  attention.  He  played 
with  his  fork  in  a  "Well,  if  that's  how  you  feel  about  it, 
perhaps  it  would  be  better  not  to  discuss  it  any  further, 
my  dear  madam,"  manner,  growing  every  second  more 
flushed,  embarrassed,  sick,  angry;  trying  harder  every 
second  to  look  unconcerned. 

Aunt  Emma  hawked  a  delicate  and  ladylike  hawk  in 
her  patrician  throat,  prefatory  to  a  new  attack.  Carl 
knew  he  would  be  tempted  to  retort  brutally. 

Then  from  the  door  of  the  dining-room  whimpered  the 
high  voice  of  an  excited  child: 

"Oh,  mamma,  oh,  Cousin  Ruthie,  nurse  says  Hawk 
Ericson  is  here!  I  want  to  see  him!" 

Every  one  turned  toward  a  boy  of  five  or  six,  round  as 
a  baby  chicken,  in  his  fuzzy  miniature  pajamas,  protect- 
ingly  holding  a  cotton  monkey  under  his  arm,  sturdy  and 
shy  and  defiant. 

"Why,  Arthur!"  "Why,  my  son!"  "Oh,  the  darling 
baby!"  from  the  table. 

"Come  here,  Arthur,  and  let's  hear  your  troubles  be- 
fore nurse  nabs  you,  old  son,"  said  Phil,  not  at  all  con- 
descendingly, rising  from  the  table,  holding  out  his  arms. 

"No,  no!  You  just  let  me  go!  I  want  to  see  Hawk 

349 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Ericson.  Is  that  Hawk  Ericson?"  demanded  the  son  of 
Aunt  Emma,  pointing  at  Carl. 

"Yes,  sweetheart,"  said  Ruth,  softly,  proudly. 

Running  madly  about  the  end  of  the  table,  Arthur 
jumped  at  Carl's  lap. 

Carl  swung  him  up  and  inquired,  "What  is  it,  old 
man?" 

"Are  you  Hawk  Ericson?" 

"At  your  commands,  cap'n." 

Aunt  Emma  rose  and  said,  masterfully,  "Come,  little 
son,  now  you've  seen  Mr.  Ericson  it's  up  to  beddie  again, 
up — to — beddie." 

"No,  no;  please  no,  mamma!  I've  never  seen  a* 
aviator  before,  not  in  all  my  life,  and  you  promised  me 
'cross  your  heart,  at  Pasadena  you  did,  I  could  see  one." 

Arthur's  face  showed  signs  of  imminent  badness. 

"Well,  you  may  stay  for  a  while,  then,"  said  Aunt 
Emma,  weakly,  unconscious  that  her  sway  had  departed 
from  her,  while  the  rest  of  the  table  grinned,  except  Carl, 
who  was  absorbed  in  Arthur's  ecstasy. 

"I'm  going  to  be  a*  aviator,  too;  I  think  a'  aviator  is 
braver  than  anybody.  I'd  rather  be  a'  aviator  than  a 
general  or  a  policeman  or  anybody.  I  got  a  picture  of 
you  in  my  scrap-book — you  got  a  funny  hat  like  Cousin 
Bobby  wears  when  he  plays  football  in  it.  Shall  I  get 
you  the  picture  in  my  scrap-book?  .  .  .  Honest,  will  you 
give  me  another?" 

Aunt  Emma  made  one  more  attempt  to  coax  Arthur  up 
to  bed,  but  his  Majesty  refused,  and  she  compromised  by 
scolding  his  nurse  and  sending  up  for  his  dressing-gown, 
a  small,  blue  dressing-gown  on  which  yellow  ducks  and 
white  bunny-rabbits  paraded  proudly. 

"Like  our  blue  bowl!"  Carl  remarked  to  Ruth. 

Not  till  after  coffee  in  the  drawing-room  would  Arthur 
consent  to  go  to  bed.  This  real  head  of  the  Emma  Win- 
slow  family  was  far  too  much  absorbed  in  making  Carl 
tell  of  his  long  races,  and  "Why  does  a  flying-machine 

350 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

fly?  What's  a  wind  pressure?  Why  does  the  wind 
shove  up?  Why  is  the  wings  curved?  Why  does  it 
want  to  catch  the  wind  ?"  The  others  listened,  including 
even  Aunt  Emma. 

Carl  went  home  early.  Ruth  had  the  opportunity  to 
confide: 

"Hawk  dear,  I  can't  tell  you  how  ashamed  I  am  of 
my  family  for  enduring  anybody  so  rude  and  opinionated 
as  Aunt  Emma.  But — it's  all  right,  now,  isn't  it?  .  .  . 
No,  no,  don't  kiss  me,  but — dear  dreams,  Hawk." 

Phil's  voice,  from  behind,  shouted:  "Oh,  Ericson! 
Just  a  second." 

Carl  was  not  at  all  pleased.  He  remembered  that  Phil 
had  listened  with  obvious  amusement  to  his  agonized 
attempt  to  turn  Aunt  Emma's  attacks. 

Said  Phil,  while  Ruth  disappeared:  "Which  way  you 
going?  Walk  to  the  subway  with  you.  You  win,  old 
man.  I  admire  your  nerve  for  facing  Aunt  Emma. 

What  I  wanted  to  say I  hope  to  thunder  you  don't 

think  I  was  in  any  way  responsible  for  Mrs.  Winslow's 
linking  me  and  Ruth  that  way  and Oh,  you  under- 
stand. I  admire  you  like  the  devil  for  knowing  what 
you  want  and  going  after  it.  I  suppose  you'll  have  to 
convince  Ruth  yet,  but,  by  Jove!  you've  convinced  me! 
Glad  you  had  Arthur  for  ally.  They  don't  make  kiddies 
any  better.  God!  if  I  could  have  a  son  like  that — -  I 
turn  off  here.  G-good  luck,  Ericson." 

"Thanks  a  lot,  Phil." 

"Thanks.    Good  night,  Carl." 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

JONG  BEACH,  on  the  first  hot  Sunday  of  May, 
-Lrf  when  motorists  come  out  from  New  York,  half-ready 
to  open  asphalt  hearts  to  sea  and  sky.  Carl's  first  sight 
of  it,  save  from  an  aeroplane,  and  he  was  mad-happy  to 
find  real  shore  so  near  the  city. 

Ruth  and  he  were  picnicking,  vulgar  and  unashamed, 
among  the  dunes  at  the  end  of  the  long  board-walk,  like 
the  beer-drinking,  pickle-eating  parties  of  fishermen  and 
the  family  groups  with  red  table-cloths,  grape-basket 
lunches,  and  colored  Sunday  supplements.  Ruth  de- 
clared that  she  preferred  them  to  the  elegant  loungers 
who  were  showing  off  new  motor-coats  on  the  board-walk. 
But  Carl  and  she  had  withdrawn  a  bit  from  the  crowds, 
and  in  the  dunes  had  made  a  nest,  with  a  book  and  a 
magazine  and  a  box  of  chocolates  and  Carl's  collapsible 
lunch-kit. 

Not  New  York  only,  but  all  of  Ruth's  relatives  were 
forgot.  Aunt  Emma  Truegate  Winslow  was  a  myth  of 
the  dragon-haunted  past.  Here  all  was  fresh  color  and 
free  spaces  looking  to  open  sea.  Behind  the  dunes,  with 
their  traceries  of  pale  grass,  reveled  the  sharp,  unshadowed 
green  of  marshes,  and  an  inland  bay  that  was  blue  as 
bluing,  a  startling  blue,  bordered  by  the  emerald  marshes. 
To  one  side — afar,  not  troubling  their  peace — were  the 
crimson  roofs  of  fantastic  houses,  like  chalets  and  Cali- 
fornia missions  and  villas  of  the  Riviera,  with  gables  and 
turrets  of  red  tiles. 

352 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Before  their  feet  was  the  cream-colored  beach,  marked 
by  ridges  of  driftwood  mixed  with  small  glistening  shells, 
long  ranks  of  pale -yellow  seaweed,  and  the  delicate 
wrinkles  in  the  sand  that  were  the  tracks  of  receding  waves. 
The  breakers  left  the  beach  wet  and  shining  for  a  mo- 
ment, like  plates  of  raw-colored  copper,  making  one  cry 
out  with  its  flashing  beauty.  Then,  at  last,  the  eyes  lift- 
ed to  unbroken  bluewater  —  nothing  between  them  and 
Europe  save  rolling  waves  and  wave-crests  like  white 
plumes.  The  sea  was  of  a  diaphanous  blue  that  shaded 
through  a  bold  steel  blue  and  a  lucent  blue  enamel  to  a 
rich  ultramarine  which  absorbed  and  healed  the  office- 
worn  mind.  The  sails  of  tacking  sloops  were  a-blossom; 
sea-gulls  swooped;  a  tall  surf-fisherman  in  red  flannel 
shirt  and  shiny  black  hip-boots  strode  out  into  the  water 
and  cast  with  a  long  curve  of  his  line;  cumulus  clouds, 
whose  pure  white  was  shaded  with  a  delicious  golden 
tone,  were  baronial  above;  and  out  on  the  sky-line  the 
steamers  raced  by. 

Round  them  was  the  warm  intimacy  of  the  dune  sands; 
beyond  was  infinite  space  calling  to  them  to  be  big  and 
unafraid. 

Talking,  falling  into  silences  touched  with  the  mystery 
of  sun  and  sea,  they  confessed  youth's  excited  wonder 
about  the  world;  Carl  sitting  cross-legged,  rubbing  his 
ankles,  a  springy  figure  in  blue  flannel  and  a  daring  tie; 
while  Ruth,  in  deep-rose  linen,  her  throat  bright  and  bare, 
lay  with  her  chin  in  her  hands,  a  flush  beneath  the  gentle 
brown  of  her  cheeks,  her  white-clad  ankles  crossed  under 
her  skirt,  slender  against  the  gray  sand,  thoughtful  of 
eye,  lost  in  happiness. 

"Some  day,"  Carl  was  musing,  "your  children  and 
mine  will  say,  'You  certainly  lived  in  the  most  marvelous 
age  in  the  world.'  Think  of  it.  They  talk  about  the 
romance  of  the  Crusades  and  the  Romans  and  all  that, 
but  think  of  the  miracles  we've  seen  already,  and  we're 
only  kids.  Aviation  and  the  automobile  and  wireless 

353 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

and  moving  pictures  and  electric  locomotives  and  electric 
cooking  and  the  use  of  radium  and  the  X-ray  and  the 
linotype  and  the  submarine  and  the  labor  movement — 
the  I.  W.  W.  and  syndicalism  and  all  that — not  that  I 
know  anything  about  the  labor  movement,  but  I  suppose 
it's  the  most  important  of  all.  And  Metchnikoff  and 
Ehrlich.  Oh  yes,  and  a  good  share  of  the  development 
of  the  electric  light  and  telephone  and  the  phonograph. 
.  .  .  Golly!  In  just  a  few  years!'* 

"Yes,"  Ruth  added,  "and  Montessori's  system  of  edu- 
cation— that's  what  I  think  is  the  most  important.  .  .  . 
See  that  sail-boat,  Hawk!  Like  a  lily.  And  the  late- 
afternoon  gold  on  those  marshes.  I  think  this  salt  breeze 
blows  away  all  the  bad  Ruth.  .  .  .Oh!  Don't  forget  the 
attempts  to  cure  cancer  and  consumption.  So  many 
big  things  starting  right  now,  while  we're  sitting  here." 

"Lord!  what  an  age!  Romance — why,  there's  more 
romance  in  a  wireless  spark— think  of  it,  little  lonely  wal- 
lowing steamer,  at  night,  out  in  the  dark,  slamming  out 
a  radio  like  forty  thousand  tigers  spitting — and  a  man 
getting  it  here  on  Long  Island.  More  romance  than  in 
all  the  galleons  that  ever  sailed  the  purple  tropics,  which 
they  mostly  ain't  purple,  but  dirty  green.  Anything  's 
possible  now.  World  cools  off — a' right,  we'll  move  on 
to  some  other  planet.  It  gets  me  going.  Don't  have  to 
believe  in  fairies  to  give  the  imagination  a  job,  to-day. 
Glad  I've  been  an  aviator;  gives  me  some  place  in  it  all, 
anyway." 

"I'm  glad,  too,  Hawk,  terribly  glad." 

The  sun  was  crimsoning;  the  wind  grew  chilly.  The 
beach  was  scattered  with  camp-fires.  Their  own  fire 
settled  into  compact  live  coals  which,  in  the  dusk  of  the 
dune-hollow,  spread  over  the  million  bits  of  quartz  a  glow 
through  which  pirouetted  the  antic  sand-fleas.  Carl's 
cigarette  had  the  fragrance  that  comes  only  from  being 
impregnated  with  the  smoke  of  an  outdoor  fire.  The 
waves  were  lyric,  and  a  group  at  the  next  fire  crooned 

354 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Old  Black  Joe."  The  two  lovers  curled  in  their  nest. 
Hand  moved  toward  hand. 

Ruth  whispered:  "It's  sweet  to  be  with  all  these  people 
and  their  fires.  .  .  .  Will  I  really  learn  not  to  be  super- 
cilious ?" 

"Honey!  You — supercilious?  Democracy Oh, 

the  dickens!  let's  not  talk  about  theories  any  more,  but 
just  about  Us!" 

Her  hand,  tight-coiled  as  a  snail-shell,  was  closed  in  his. 

"Your  hand  is  asleep  in  my  hand's  arms,"  he  whispered. 
The  ball  of  his  thumb  pressed  her  thumb,  and  he  whis- 
pered once  more:  "See.  Now  our  hands  are  kissing  each 
other — we — we  must  watch  them  better.  .  .  .  Your  thumb 
is  like  a  fairy."  Again  his  thumb,  hardened  with  file  and 
wrench  and  steering-wheel,  touched  hers.  It  was  start- 
lingly  like  a  kiss  of  real  lips. 

Lightly  she  returned  the  finger-kiss,  answering  dif- 
fidently, "Our  hands  are  mad — silly  hands  to  think  that 
Long  Beach  is  a  tropical  jungle." 

"You  aren't  angry  at  them?" 

"N-no." 

He  cradled  her  head  on  his  shoulder,  his  hand  gripping 
her  arm  till  she  cried,  "You  hurt  me."  He  kissed  her 
cheek.  She  drew  back  as  far  as  she  could.  Her  hand, 
against  his  chest,  held  him  away  for  a  minute.  Her  de- 
fense suddenly  collapsed,  and  she  was  relaxed  and  throb- 
bing in  his  arms.  He  slipped  his  fingers  under  her  chin, 
and  turned  up  her  face  till  he  could  kiss  her  lips.  He 
had  not  known  the  kiss  of  man  and  woman  could  be  so 
long,  so  stirring.  Yet  at  first  he  was  disappointed. 
This  was,  after  all,  but  a  touch — just  such  a  touch  as 
finger  against  finger.  But  her  lips  grew  more  intense 
against  his,  returning  and  taking  the  kiss;  both  of  them 
giving  and  receiving  at  once. 

Wondering  at  himself  for  it,  Carl  thought  of  other 
things.  He  was  amazed  that,  while  their  lips  were  hot 
together,  he  worried  as  to  what  train  Ruth  ought  to  take, 

355 


.  THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

after  dinner.  Yet,  with  such  thoughts  conferring,  he 
was  in  an  ecstasy  beyond  sorrow;  praying  that  to  her, 
as  to  him,  there  was  no  pain  but  instead  a  rapture  in  the 
sting  of  her  lips,  as  her  teeth  cut  a  little  into  them.  ...  A 
kiss — thing  that  the  polite  novels  sketch  as  a  second's  un- 
bodied bliss — how  human  it  was,  with  teeth  and  lips  to 
consider;  common  as  eating — and  divine  as  martyrdom. 
His  lips  were  saying  to  her  things  too  vast  and  extrava- 
gant for  a  plain  young  man  to  venture  upon  in  words: 

"Lady,  to  you  I  chant  my  reverence  and  faith  everlast- 
ing, in  such  unearthly  music  as  the  angels  use  when  with 
lambent  wings  they  salute  the  marching  dawn."  Such 
lyric  tributes,  and  an  emotion  too  subtle  to  fit  into  any 
words  whatever,  his  lips  were  saying.  .  .  . 

Then  she  was  drawing  back,  rending  the  kiss,  crying, 
"You're  almost  smothering  me!" 

With  his  arms  easily  about  her,  but  with  her  weight 
against  his  shoulder,  they  and  their  love  veiled  from  the 
basket-parties  by  the  darkness,  he  said,  quiveringly: 
"See,  my  arms  are  a  little  house  for  you,  just  as  my 
hand  was  a  little  house  for  your  hand,  once.  My  arms 
are  the  walls,  and  your  head  and  mine  together  are  the 
roof." 

"I  love  the  little  house." 

"No.     Say,  'I  love  you.'" 

"No." 

"Say  it." 

"No." 

"Please " 

"Oh,  Hawk  dear,  I  couldn't  even  if — just  now,  I  do 
want  to  say  it,  but  I  want  to  be  fair.  I  am  terribly  happy 
to  be  in  the  house  of  Hawk's  arms.  I'm  not  afraid  in  it, 
even  out  here  on  the  dark  dunes — which  Aunt  Emma 
wouldn't — somehow — approve!  But  I  do  want  to  be 
fair  to  you,  and  I'm  afraid  I'm  not,  when  I  let  you  love 
me  this  way.  I  don't  want  to  hurt  you.  Ever.  Per- 
haps it's  egotistical  of  me,  but  I'm  afraid  you  would  be 

356 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

hurt  if  I  let  you  kiss  me  and  then  afterward  I  decided 
I  didn't  love  you  at  all." 

"But  can't  you,  some  day " 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,  I  don't  know!  I'm  not  sure  I 
know  what  love  is.  I'm  not  sure  it's  love  that  makes  me 
happy  (as  I  really  am)  when  you  kiss  me.  Perhaps  I'm 
just  curious,  and  experimenting.  I  was  quite  conscious, 
when  you  kissed  me  then;  quite  conscious  and  curious; 
and  once  I  caught  myself  wondering  for  half  a  second 
what  train  we'd  take.  I  was  ashamed  of  that,  but  I  wasn't 
ashamed  of  taking  mental  notes  and  learning  what  these 
'  kisses/  that  we  mention  so  glibly,  really  are.  Just  ex- 
perimenting, you  see.  And  if  you  were  too  serious  about 
our  kiss,  it  wouldn't  be  at  all  fair  to  you." 

"I'm  glad  you're  frank,  blessed,  and  I  guess  I  under- 
stand pretty  well  how  you  feel,  but,  after  all,  I'm  fairly 
simple  about  such  things.  Blessed,  blessed,  I  don't  really 
know  a  thing  but  '1  love  you.'" 

His  arms  were  savage  again;  he  kissed  her,  kissed  her 
lips,  kissed  the  hollow  of  her  throat.  Then  he  lifted  her 
from  the  ground  and  would  not  set  her  down  till  she 
had  kissed  him  back. 

"You  frightened  me  a  lot,  then,"  she  said.  "Did  the 
child  want  to  impress  Ruth  with  his  mighty  strength? 
Well,  she  shall  be  impressed.  Hawk,  I  do  hope —  I  do 
hate  myself  for  not  knowing  my  mind.  I  will  try  not  to 
experiment.  I  want  you  to  be  happy.  I  do  want  to 
be  honest  with  you.  If  I'm  honest,  will  you  try  not  to 
be  too  impatient  till  I  do  know  just  what  I  want?  .  .  .  Oh, 
I'm  sick  of  the  modern  lover!  I  talk  and  talk  about  love; 
it  seems  as  though  we'd  lost  the  power  to  be  simple,  like 
the  old  ballads.  Or  weren't  the  ballad  people  really 
simple,  either?  You  say  you  are;  so  I  think  you  will 
have  to  run  away  with  me.  .  .  .  But  not  till  after  dinner! 
Come." 

The  moon  was  rising.  Swinging  hands,  they  tramped 
toward  the  board-walk.  The  crunch  of  their  feet  in  the 

357 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

sand  was  the  rhythmic  spell  of  a  magician,  which  she 
broke  when  she  sighed: 

"Should  I  have  let  you  kiss  me,  out  here  in  the  wilds? 
Will  you  respect  me  after  it?" 

"  Princess,  you're  all  the  respect  there  is  in  the  world." 

"It  seems  so  strange.  We  were  absorbed  in  war  and 
electricity  and  then " 

"Love  is  war  and  electricity,  or  else  it's  dull,  and  I 
don't  think  we  two  Ml  ever  get  dull — if  you  do  decide 
you  can  love  me.  We'll  wander:  cabin  in  the  Rockies, 
with  forty  mountains  for  our  garden  fence,  and  an  eagle 
for  our  suburban  train." 

"And  South  Sea  islands  silhouetted  at  sunset!  .  .  . 
Look!  That  moon!  ...  I  always  imagine  it  so  clearly 
when  I  hear  Hawaiian  singers  on  the  Victrola — and  a 
Hawaiian  beach,  with  fireflies  in  the  jungle  behind  and  a 
phosphorescent  sea  in  front  and  native  girls  dancing  in 
garlands." 

"Yes!  And  Paris  boulevards  and  a  mysterious  castle 
in  the  Austrian  mountains,  with  a  hidden  treasure  in  dark, 
secret  dungeons,  and  heavy  iron  armor;  and  then,  bing! 
a  brand-new  prairie  town  in  Saskatchewan  or  Dakota, 
with  brand-new  sunlight  on  the  fresh  pine  shacks,  and 
beyond  the  town  the  plains  with  brand-new  grass  rolling." 

"But  seriously,  Hawk,  would  you  want  to  go  to  all 
those  places,  if  you  were  married  ?  Would  you,  practical- 
ly? You  know,  even  rich  globe-trotters  go  to  the  same 
sorts  of  places,  mostly.  And  we  wouldn't  even  be  rich, 
would  we?" 

"No,  just  comfortable;   maybe  five  thousand  a  year." 

"Well,  would  you  really  want  to  keep  on  going,  and 
take  your  wife?  Or  would  you  settle  down  like  the  rest, 
and  spend  money  so  you  could  keep  in  shape  to  make 
money  to  spend  to  keep  in  shape?" 

"Seriously  I  would  keep  going — if  I  had  the  right  girl 
to  go  with  me.  It  would  be  mighty  important  which 
one,  though,  I  guess — and  by  that  I  mean  you.  Once, 

358 


THE    TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

when  I  quit  flying,  I  thought  that  maybe  I'd  stop  wander- 
ing and  settle  down,  maybe  even  marry  a  Joralemon  kind 
of  a  girl.  But  I  was  meant  to  hike  for  the  hiking's 
sake.  .  .  .  Only,  not  alone  any  more.  I  need  you.  .  .  . 
We'd  go  and  go.  No  limit.  .  .  .  And  we  wouldn't  just  go 
places,  either;  we'd  be  different  things.  We'd  be  Con- 
necticut farmers  one  year,  and  run  a  mine  in  Mexico  the 
next,  and  loaf  in  Paris  the  next,  if  we  had  the  money." 

"Sometimes  you  almost  tempt  me  to  like  you." 

"Like  me  now!" 

"No,  not  now,  but Here's  the  board-walk." 

"Where's  those  steps?  Oh  yes.  Gee!  I  hate  to  leave 
the  water  without  having  had  a  swim.  Wish  we'd  had 
one.  Dare  you  to  go  wading!" 

"Oh,  ought  I  to,  do  you  think?  Wading  would  be 
silly.  And  nice." 

"Course  you  oughtn't.  Come  on.  Don't  you  remem- 
ber how  the  sand  feels  between  your  toes?" 

The  moon  brooded  upon  the  lulled  waves,  and  quested 
among  the  ridges  of  driftwood  for  pearly  shells.  The 
pools  left  by  the  waves  were  enticing.  Ruth  retreated 
into  the  shelter  of  the  board-walk  and  came  shyly  out, 
clutching  her  skirts,  her  feet  and  ankles  silver  in  the  light. 

"The  sand  does  feel  good,  but  uh!  it's  getting  colder 
and  colder!"  she  wailed,  as  she  cautiously  advanced  into 
the  water.  "I'll  think  up  punishments  for  you.  You've 
not  only  caused  me  to  be  cold,  but  you've  made  me 
abominably  self-conscious." 

"Don't  be  self-conscious,  blessed.  We  are  just  chil- 
dren exploring."  He  splashed  out,  coat  off,  trousers 
rolled  to  the  knee  above  his  thin,  muscular  legs,  gallop- 
ing along  the  edge  of  the  water  like  a  large  puppy,  while 
she  danced  after  him. 

They  were  stilled  to  the  persuasive  beauty  of  the  night. 
Music  from  the  topaz-jeweled  hotels  far  down  the  beach 
wove  itself  into  the  peace  on  land  and  sea.  A  fish  lying  on 
shore  was  turned  by  the  moon  into  ivory  with  carven  scales. 

359 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Before  them,  reaching  to  the  ancient  towers  of  England 
and  France  and  the  islands  of  the  sea,  was  the  whispering 
water.  A  tenderness  that  understood  everything,  made 
allowance  for  everything  in  her  and  in  himself,  folded  its 
wings  round  him  as  he  scanned  her  that  stood  like  a  slender 
statue  of  silver — dark  hair  moon-brightened,  white  arms 
holding  her  skirts,  white  legs  round  which  the  spent 
waves  sparkled  with  unworldly  fire.  He  waded  over  to 
her  and  timidly  kissed  the  edge  of  her  hair. 

She  rubbed  her  cheek  against  his.  "Now  we  must 
run,"  she  said.  She  quickly  turned  back  to  the  shadow 
of  the  board-walk,  to  draw  on  her  stockings  and  shoes, 
kneeling  on  the  sand  like  the  simple  maid  of  the  ballads 
which  she  had  been  envying. 

They  tramped  along  the  board-walk,  with  heels  click- 
ing like  castanets,  conscious  that  the  world  was  hushed 
in  night's  old  enchantment. 

As  they  had  answered  to  companionship  with  the 
humble  picnic-parties  among  the  dunes,  so  now  they 
found  it  amusing  to  dine  among  the  semi-great  and  the 
semi-motorists  at  the  Nassau.  Ruth  had  a  distinct  pleas- 
ure when  T.  Wentler,  horse-fancier,  aviation  enthusiast, 
president  of  the  First  State  Bank  of  Sacramento,  came 
up,  reminded  Carl  of  their  acquaintanceship  at  the 
Oakland  -  Berkeley  Aero  Meet,  and  begged  Ruth  and 
Carl  to  join  him,  his  wife,  and  Senator  Leeford,  for 
coffee. 

As  they  waited  for  their  train,  quiet  after  laughter, 
Ruth  remarked:  "It  was  jolly  to  play  with  the  Person- 
ages. You  haven't  seen  much  of  the  frivolous  side 
of  me.  It's  pretty  important.  You  don't  know  how 
much  soul  satisfaction  I  get  out  of  dancing  all  night  and 
playing  tennis  with  flanneled  oafs  and  eating  marrons 
glaces  and  chatting  in  a  box  at  the  opera  till  I  spoil  the 
entire  evening  for  all  the  German  music-lovers,  and  talk- 
ing to  all  the  nice  doggies  from  the  Tennis  and  Racquet 
Club  whenever  I  get  invited  to  Piping  Rock  or  Meadow 

360 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

Brook  <>r  any  other  country  club  that  has  ancestors.  I 
want  you  to  take  warning/' 

"Did  you  really  miss  Piping  Rock  much  to-day?" 

"No — but  I  might  to-morrow,  and  I  might  get  horribly 
bored  in  our  cabin  in  the  Rockies  and  hate  the  stony  old 
peaks,  and  long  for  tea  and  scandal  in  a  corner  at  the 
Ritz." 

"Then  we'd  hike  on  to  San  Francisco;  have  tea  at  the 
St.  Francis  or  the  Fairmont  or  the  Palace;  then  beat  it 
for  your  Hawaii  and  fireflies  in  the  bush." 

"Perhaps,  but  suppose,  just  suppose  we  were  married, 
and  suppose  the  Touricar  didn't  go  so  awfully  well,  and 
we  had  to  be  poor,  and  couldn't  go  running  away,  but  had 
to  stick  in  one  beastly  city  flat  and  economize!  It's  all 
very  well  to  talk  of  working  things  out  together,  but 
think  of  not  being  able  to  have  decent  clothes,  and  going 
to  the  movies  every  night — ugh!  When  I  see  some  of 
the  girls  who  used  to  be  so  pretty  and  gay,  and  they  went 
and  married  poor  men — now  they  are  so  worn  and  tired 
and  bedraggled  and  perambulatorious,  and  they  worry 
about  Biddies  and  furnaces  and  cabbages,  and  their  hair 
is  just  scratched  together,  with  the  dubbest  hats — I'd 
rather  be  an  idle  rich." 

"If  we  got  stuck  like  that,  I'd  sell  out  and  we'd  hike 
to  the  mountain  cabin,  anyway,  say  go  up  in  the  Santa 
Lucias,  and  keep  wild  bees." 

"And  probably  get  stung — in  the  many  subtle  senses 
of  that  word.  And  I'd  have  to  cook  and  wash.  That 
would  be  fun  as  fun,  but  to  have  to  do  it ' 

"Ruth,  honey,  let's  not  worry  about  it  now,  anyhow. 
I  don't  believe  there's  much  danger.  And  don't  let's 
spoil  this  bully  day." 

"It  has  been  sweet.     I  won't  croak  any  more." 

"There's  the  train  coming." 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

WHILE  the  New  York  June  grew  hotter  and  hotter 
and  stickier  and  stickier,  while  the  crowds,  crammed 
together  in  the  subway  in  a  jam  as  unlovely  as  a  pile  of 
tomato-cans  on  a  public  dump-heap,  grew  pale  in  the  damp 
heat,  Carl  labored  in  his  office,  and  almost  every  eve- 
ning called  on  Ruth,  who  was  waiting  for  the  first  of  July, 
when  she  was  to  go  to  Cousin  Patton  Kerr's,  in  the  Berk- 
shires.  Carl  tried  to  bring  her  coolness.  He  ate  only 
poached  eggs  on  toast  or  soup  and  salad  for  dinner,  that 
he  might  not  be  torpid.  He  gave  her  moss-roses  with 
drops  of  water  like  dew  on  the  stems.  They  sat  out  on 
the  box-stoop — the  unfriendly  New  York  street  adopting 
for  a  time  the  frank  neighborliness  of  a  village — and  ex- 
claimed over  every  breeze.  They  talked  about  the  charm 
of  forty  degrees  below  zero.  That  is,  sometimes.  Their 
favorite  topic  was  themselves. 

She  still  insisted  that  she  was  not  in  love  with  him; 
hooted  at  the  idea  of  being  engaged.  She  might  some 
day  go  off  and  get  married  to  some  one,  but  engaged? 
Never!  She  finally  agreed  that  they  were  engaged  to  be 
engaged  to  be  engaged.  One  night  when  they  sought 
the  windy  housetop,  she  twined  his  arms  about  her  and 
almost  went  to  sleep,  with  her  hair  smooth  beneath  his 
chin.  He  sat  motionless  till  his  arms  ached  with  the 
strain,  till  her  shoulder  seemed  to  stick  into  his  like  a  bar 
of  iron;  glad  that  she  trusted  him  enough  to  doze  into 
warm  slumber  in  the  familiarity  of  his  arms.  Yet  he 
dared  not  kiss  her  throat,  as  he  had  done  at  Long  Beach. 

362 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

As  lovers  do,  Carl  had  thought  intently  of  her  warn- 
ing that  she  did  care  for  clothes,  dancing,  country  clubs. 
Ruth  would  have  been  caressingly  surprised  had  she 
known  the  thought  and  worried  conscientiousness  he  gave 
to  the  problem  of  planning  "parties"  for  her.  Ideas 
were  always  popping  up  in  the  midst  of  his  work,  and 
never  giving  him  rest  till  he  had  noted  them  down  on 
memo.-papers.  He  carried  about,  on  the  backs  of  enve- 
lopes, such  notes  as  these: 

Join  country  clh  take  R  dances  there? 
Basket  of  fruit  for  R 
Invite  Mason  W  lunch 
Orgnze  Tear  tour  NY  to  SF 
Newspaper  men  on  tour  probly  Forbes 
Rem  Walter's  new  altitude  16,954 
R  to  Astor  Roof 
Rem  country  c 

He  did  get  a  card  to  the  Peace  Waters  Country  Club 
and  take  Ruth  to  a  dance  there.  She  seemed  to  know 
every  other  member,  and  danced  eloquently.  He  took  her 
to  the  Josiah  Bagbys'  for  dinner;  to  the  first-night  of  a 
summer  musical  comedy.  But  he  was  still  the  stranger 
in  New  York,  and  "parties"  are  not  to  be  had  by  tipping 
waiters  and  buying  tickets.  Half  of  the  half-dozen  affairs 
which  they  attended  were  of  her  inspiration;  he  was  in- 
vited to  go  yachting  at  Larchmont,  motoring,  swim- 
ming on  Long  Island,  with  friends  of  herself  and  her 
brothers. 

One  evening  that  strikes  into  Carl's  memories  of  those 
days  of  the  pays  du  tendre  is  the  evening  on  which  Phil 
Dunleavy  insisted  on  celebrating  a  Yale  baseball  victory 
by  taking  them  to  dinner  in  the  oak-room  of  the  Ritz- 
Carlton,  under  whose  alabaster  lights,  among  the  cos- 
mopolites, they  dined  elaborately  and  smoked  slim,  im- 
ported cigarettes.  The  thin  music  of  violins  took  them 
into  the  lonely  gray  groves  of  the  Land  of  Wandering 

*4  363 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

Tunes,  till  Phil  began  to  talk,  disclosing  to  them  a  devo- 
tion to  beauty,  a  satirical  sense  of  humor,  and  a  final 
acceptance  of  Carl  as  his  friend. 

A  hundred  other  "parties"  Carl  planned,  while  dining 
alone  at  inferior  restaurants.  A  hundred  times  he  took 
a  ten-cent  dessert  instead  of  an  exciting  fifteen-cent  straw- 
berry shortcake,  to  save  money  for  those  parties.  (Out 
of  such  sordid  thoughts  of  nickel  coins  is  built  a  love 
enduring,  and  even  tolerable  before  breakfast  coffee.) 

Yet  always  to  him  their  real  life  was  in  simple  jaunts 
out  of  doors,  arranged  without  considering  other  people. 
Her  father  seemed  glad  of  that.  He  once  said  to  Carl 
(giving  him  a  cigar),  "You  children  had  better  not  let 
Aunt  Emma  know  that  you  are  enjoying  yourselves  as 
you  want  to!  How  is  the  automobile  business  going?" 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  relate  that  Carl  was  inspired 
by  love  to  put  so  much  of  that  celebrated  American 
quality  "punch"  into  his  work  that  the  Touricar  was 
sweeping  the  market.  Or  to  picture  with  quietly  falling 
tears  the  pathos  of  his  business  failure  at  the  time  when 
he  most  needed  money.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Touricar 
affairs  were  going  as,  in  real  life,  most  businesses  go — just 
fairly  well.  A  few  cars  were  sold;  there  were  prospects 
of  other  sales;  the  VanZile  Corporation  neither  planned 
to  drop  the  Touricar,  nor  elected  our  young  hero  vice- 
president  of  the  corporation. 

In  June  Gertrude  Cowles  and  her  mother  left  for  Jorale- 
mon.  Carl  had,  since  Christmas,  seen  them  about  once 
a  month.  Gertie  had  at  first  represented  an  unhappy 
old  friend  to  whom  he  had  to  be  kind.  Then,  as  she 
seemed  never  to  be  able  to  give  up  the  desire  to  see  him 
tied  down,  whether  by  her  affection  or  by  his  work,  Carl 
came  to  regard  her  as  an  irritating  foe  to  the  freedom 
which  he  prized  the  more  because  of  the  increasing  bond- 
age of  the  office.  The  last  stage  was  pure  indifference 

364 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

to  her.  Gertie  was  either  a  chance  for  simple  sweetness 
which  he  failed  to  take,  or  she  was  a  peril  which  he  had 
escaped,  according  to  one's  view  of  her;  but  in  any  case 
he  had  missed — or  escaped — her  as  a  romantic  hero  es- 
capes fire,  flood,  and  plot.  She  meant  nothing  to  him, 
never  could  again.  Life  had  flowed  past  her  as,  except 
in  novels  with  plots,  most  lives  do  flow  past  temporary 
and  fortuitous  points  of  interest.  .  .  .  Gertie  was  farther 
from  him  now  than  those  dancing  Hawaiian  girls  whom 
Ruth  and  he  hoped  some  day  to  see.  Yet  by  her  reaching 
out  for  his  liberty  Gertie  had  first  made  him  prize  Ruth. 

The  ist  of  July,  1913,  Ruth  left  for  the  Patton  Kerrs' 
country  house  in  the  Berkshires,  near  Pittsfield.  Carl 
wrote  to  her  every  day.  He  told  her,  apropos  of  Touri- 
cars  and  roof-gardens  and  aviation  records  and  Sun- 
day motor-cycling  with  Bobby  Winslow,  that  he  loved 
her;  he  even  made,  at  the  end  of  his  letters,  the  old- 
fashioned  lines  of  crosses  to  represent  kisses.  Whenever 
he  hinted  how  much  he  missed  her,  how  much  he  wanted 
to  feel  her  startle  in  his  arms,  he  wondered  what  she 
would  read  out  of  it;  wondered  if  she  would  put  the 
letter  under  her  pillow. 

She  answered  every  other  day  with  friendly  letters  droll 
in  their  descriptions  of  the  people  she  met.  His  call  of 
love  she  did  not  answer — directly.  But  she  admitted 
that  she  missed  their  playtimes;  and  once  she  wrote  to 
him,  late  on  a  cold  Berkshire  night,  with  a  black  rain  and 
wind  like  a  baying  bloodhound: 

It  is  so  still  in  my  room  &  so  wild  outside  that  I  am  frightened. 
I  have  tried  to  make  myself  smart  in  a  blue  silk  dressing  gown 
&  a  tosh  lace  breakfast  cap,  &  I  will  write  neatly  with  a  quill 
pen  from  the  Mayfair,  but  just  the  same  I  am  a  lonely  baby  & 
I  want  you  here  to  comfort  me.  Would  you  be  too  shocked  to 
come?  I  would  put  a  Navajo  blanket  on  my  bed  &  a  papier 
mache  Turkish  dagger  &  head  of  Othello  over  my  bed  &  pre- 
tend it  was  a  cozy  corner,  that  is  of  course  if  they  still  have 

365 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

papier  mache  ornaments,  I  suppose  they  still  live  in  Harlem  & 
Brooklyn.  We  would  sit  very  quietly  in  two  wicker  chairs  on 
either  side  of  my  fireplace  &  listen  to  the  swollen  brook  in  the 
ravine  just  below  my  window.  But  with  no  Hawk  here  the 
wind  keeps  wailing  that  Pan  is  dead  &  that  there  won't  ever 
again  be  any  sunshine  on  the  valley.  Dear,  it  really  isn't  safe 
to  be  writing  like  this,  after  reading  it  you  will  suppose  that  it's 
just  you  that  I  am  lonely  for,  but  of  course  I'd  be  glad  for  Phil 
or  Puggy  Crewden  or  your  nice  solemn  Walter  MacMonnies  or 
any  suitor  who  would  make  foolish  noises  &  hide  me  from  the 
wind's  hunting.  Now  I  will  seal  this  up  &  NOT  send  it  in  the 
morning. 

Your  playmate  Ruth 

Here  is  one  small  kiss  on  the  forehead  but  remember  it  is  just 
because  of  the  wind  &  rain. 

Presumably  she  did  mail  the  letter.  At  least,  he  re- 
ceived it. 

He  carried  her  letters  in  the  side-pocket  of  his  coat 
till  the  envelopes  were  worn  at  the  edges  and  nearly  cov- 
ered with  smudged  pencil-notes  about  things  he  wanted 
to  keep  in  mind  and  would,  of  course,  have  kept  in  mind 
without  making  notes.  He  kept  finding  new  meanings 
in  her  letters.  He  wanted  them  to  indicate  that  she  loved 
him;  and  any  ambiguous  phrase  signified  successively 
that  she  loved,  laughed  at,  loathed,  and  loved  him.  Once 
he  got  up  from  bed  to  take  another  look  at  a  letter  and 
see  whether  she  had  said,  "I  hope  you  had  a  dear  good 
time  at  the  Explorers'  Club  dinner,"  or  "I  hope  you  had 
a  good  time,  dear." 

Carl  was  entirely  sincere  in  his  worried  investigation 
of  her  state  of  mind.  He  knew  that  both  Ruth  and  he 
had  the  instability  as  well  as  the  initiative  of  the  vaga- 
bond. As  quickly  as  they  had  claimed  each  other,  so 
quickly  could  either  of  them  break  love's  alliance,  if 
bored.  Carl  himself,  being  anything  but  bored,  was  as 
faithfully  devoted  as  the  least  enterprising  of  moral  young 
men,  He  forgot  Gertie,  did  not  write  to  Istr^  Nash  the 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

artist,  and  when  the  VanZile  office  got  a  new  telephone- 
girl,  a  tall,  languorous  brunette  with  shadowy  eyes  and 
fine  cheeks,  he  did  not  even  smile  at  her. 

But — was  Ruth  so  bound?  She  still  refused  to  admit 
even  that  she  could  fall  in  love.  He  knew  that  Ruth  and 
he  were  not  romantic  characters,  but  every-day  people 
with  a  tendency  to  quarrel  and  demand  and  be  slack. 
He  knew  that  even  if  the  rose  dream  came  true,  there 
would  be  drab  spots  in  it.  And  now  that  she  was  away, 
with  Lenox  and  polo  to  absorb  her,  could  the  gauche, 
ignorant  Carl  Ericson,  that  he  privately  knew  himself  to 
be,  retain  her  interest  ? 

Late  in  July  he  received  an  invitation  to  spend  a  week- 
end, Friday  to  Tuesday,  with  Ruth  at  the  Patton  Kerrs'. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

'"THE  brief  trip  to  the  Berkshires  was  longer  than  any 
1  he  had  taken  these  nine  months.  He  looked  for- 
ward animatedly  to  the  journey,  remembering  details  of 
travel — such  trivial  touches  as  the  oval  brass  wash-bowls 
of  a  Pullman  sleeper,  and  how,  when  the  water  is  running 
out,  the  inside  of  the  bowl  is  covered  with  a  whitish  film 
of  water,  which  swiftly  peels  off.  He  recalled  the  cracked 
white  paint  of  a  steamer's  ventilator;  the  abruptly  stop- 
ping zhhhhh  of  a  fog-horn;  the  vast  smoky  roof  of  a 
Philadelphia  train-shed,  clamorous  with  the  train-bells 
of  a  strange  town,  giving  a  sense  of  mystery  to  the  traveler 
stepping  from  the  car  for  a  moment  to  stretch  his  legs; 
an  ugly  junction  station  platform,  with  resin  oozing  from 
the  heavy  planks  in  the  spring  sun;  the  polished  binnacle 
of  the  S.S  Panama. 

He  expected  keen  joy  in  new  fields  and  hills.  Yet  all 
the  way  north  he  was  trying  to  hold  the  train  back.  In 
a  few  minutes,  now,  he  would  see  Ruth.  And  at  this 
hour  he  did  not  even  know  definitely  that  he  liked  her. 

He  could  not  visualize  her.  He  could  see  the  sleeve 
of  her  blue  corduroy  jacket;  her  eyes  he  could  not  see. 
She  was  a  stranger.  Had  he  idealized  her?  He  was 
apologetic  for  his  unflattering  doubt,  but  of  what  sort 
was  she? 

The  train  was  stopping  at  her  station  with  rattling  win- 
dows and  a  despairing  grind  of  the  wheels.  Carl  seized 
his  overnight  bag  and  suit-case  with  fictitious  enthusiasm. 

368 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

He  was  in  a  panic.  Emerging  from  the  safe,  impersonal 
train  upon  the  platform,  he  saw  her. 

She  was  waving  to  him  from  a  one-seated  phaeton, 
come  alone  to  meet  him — and  she  was  the  adorable,  the 
perfect  comrade.  He  thought  jubilantly  as  he  strode 
along  the  platform:  "She's  wonderful.  Love  her? 
Should  say  I  do!" 

While  they  drove  under  the  elms,  past  white  cottages 
and  the  village  green,  while  they  were  talking  so  lightly 
and  properly  that  none  of  the  New  England  gossips  could 
be  wounded  in  the  sense  of  propriety,  Carl  was  learning 
her  anew.  She  was  an  outdoor  girl  now,  in  low-collared 
blouse  and  white  linen  skirt.  He  rejoiced  in  her  modu- 
lating laugh;  the  contrast  of  blue  eyes  and  dark  brows 
under  her  Panama  hat;  her  full  dark  hair,  with  a  lock 
sun-drenched;  her  bare  throat,  boyishly  brown,  feminine- 
ly smooth;  the  sweet,  clean,  fine-textured  girl  flesh  of  the 
hollow  of  one  shoulder  faintly  to  be  seen  in  the  shadow 
of  her  broad,  drooping  collar;  one  hand,  with  a  curious 
ring  of  rose  quartz  and  steel  points,  excitedly  pounding 
a  tattoo  of  greeting  with  the  whip-handle;  her  spirited 
irreverences  regarding  the  people  they  passed;  chatter 
which  showed  the  world  transformed  as  through  ruby 
glass — a  Ruth  radiant,  understanding,  his  comrade.  She 
was  all  that  he  had  believed  during  her  absence  and 
doubted  while  he  was  coming  to  her.  But  he  had  no 
time  to  repent  of  his  doubt,  now,  so  busily  was  he  exult- 
ing to  himself,  slipping  a  hand  under  her  arm:  "Love 
her?  I— should— say— I— do!' ' 

The  carriage  rolled  out  of  town  with  the  rhythmic 
creak  of  a  country  buggy,  climbed  a  hill  range  by  means 
of  the  black,  oily  state  road,  and  turned  upon  a  sandy 
side-road.  A  brook  ran  beside  them.  Sunny  fields  al- 
ternated with  woods  leaf-floored,  quiet,  holy — miraculous 
after  the  weary  city.  Below  was  a  vista  of  downward- 
sloping  fields,  divided  by  creeper-covered  stone  walls; 
then  a  sun-meshed  valley  set  with  ponds  like  shining 

369 


THE   TRAIL   Op   THE    HAWK 

glass  dishes  on  a  green  table-cloth;  beyond  all,  a  long 
reach  of  hillsides  covered  with  unbroken  fleecy  forest, 
like  green  down.  .  .  . 

"So  much  unspoiled  country,  and  yet  there's  people 
herded  in  subways!"  complained  Carl. 

They  drove  along  a  level  road,  lined  with  wild  rasp- 
berry-bushes and  full  of  a  thin  jade  light  from  the  shading 
maples.  They  gossiped  of  the  Patton  Kerrs  and  the 
Berkshires;  of  the  difference  between  the  professional 
English  week-ender  and  the  American,  who  still  has  some- 
thing of  the  nai've  provincial  delight  of  "going  visiting"; 
of  New  York  and  the  Dunleavys.  But  their  talk  lulled 
to  a  nervous  hush.  It  seemed  to  him  that  a  great  voice 
cried  from  the  clouds:  "It  is  beside  Ruth  that  you  are 
sitting;  Ruth  whose  arm  you  feel!"  In  silence  he  caught 
her  left  hand. 

As  he  slowly  drew  back  her  hand  and  the  reins  with  it, 
to  stop  the  ambling  horse,  the  two  children  stared  straight 
at  each  other,  hungry,  tremulously  afraid .  Their  kiss — not 
only  their  lips,  but  their  spirits  met  without  one  reserve. 
A  straining  long  kiss,  as  though  they  were  forcing  their 
lips  into  one  body  of  living  flame.  A  kiss  in  which  his 
eyes  were  blind  to  the  enchantment  of  the  jade  light  about 
them,  his  ears  deaf  to  brook  and  rustling  forest.  All  his 
senses  were  concentrated  on  the  close  warmth  of  her  misty 
lips,  the  curve  of  her  young  shoulder,  her  woman  sweet- 
ness and  longing.  Then  his  senses  forgot  even  her  lips, 
and  floated  off  into  a  blurred  trance  of  bodiless  happiness 
— the  kiss  of  Nirvana.  No  foreign  thought  of  trains  or 
people  or  the  future  came  now  to  drag  him  to  earth.  It 
was  the  most  devoted,  most  sacred  moment  he  had  known. 

As  he  became  again  conscious  of  lips  and  cheek  and 
brave  shoulders  and  of  her  wide-spread  fingers  gripping 
his  upper  arm,  she  was  slowly  breaking  the  spell  of  the 
kiss.  But  again  and  again  she  kissed  him,  hastily,  savage 
tokens  of  rejoicing  possession. 

She  cried:  "I  do  know  now!    I  do  love  you!" 
370 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Blessed " 

In  silence  they  stared  into  the  woods  while  her  fingers 
smoothed  his  knuckles.  Her  eyes  were  faint  with  tears, 
in  the  magic  jade  light. 

"I  didn't  know  a  kiss  could  be  like  that,"  she  marveled, 
presently.  "I  wouldn't  have  believed  selfish  Ruth  could 
give  all  of  herself." 

"Yes!     It  was  the  whole  universe." 

"Hawk  dear,  I  wasn't  experimenting,  that  time.  I'm 
glad,  glad!  To  know  I  can  really  love;  not  just  curiosity! 
.  .  .  I've  wanted  you  so  all  day.  I  thought  four  o'clock 
wouldn't  ever  come — and  oh,  darling,  my  dear,  dear  Hawk, 
I  didn't  even  know  for  sure  I'd  like  you  when  you  came! 
Sometimes  I  wanted  terribly  to  have  your  silly,  foolish, 
childish,  pale  hair  on  my  breast — such  hair!  lady's  hair! 
— but  sometimes  I  didn't  want  to  see  you  at  all,  and  I 
was  frightened  at  the  thought  of  your  coming,  and  I 
fussed  around  the  house  till  Mrs.  Pat  laughed  at  me 
and  accused  me  of  being  in  love,  and  I  denied  it — and  she 
was  right!" 

"Blessed,  I  was  scared  to  death,  all  the  way  up  here. 
I  didn't  think  you  could  be  as  wonderful  as  I  knew  you 

were!  That  sounds  mixed  but Oh,  blessed,  blessed, 

you  really  love  me?  You  really  love  me?  It's  hard  to 
believe  I've  actually  heard  you  say  it!  And  I  love  you 
so  completely.  Everything." 

"I  love  you!  .  .  .  That  is  such  an  adorable  spot  to  kiss, 
just  below  your  ear,"  she  said.  "Darling,  keep  me  safe 
in  the  little  house  of  arms,  where  there's  only  room  for 
you  and  me — no  room  for  offices  or  Aunt  Emmas!  .  .  . 
But  not  now.  We  must  hurry  on.  ...  If  a  wagon  had 
been  coming  along  the  road !" 

As  they  entered  the  rhododendron-lined  drive  of  the 
Patton  Kerr  place,  Carl  remembered  a  detail,  not  impor- 
tant, but  usual.  "Oh  yes,"  he  said,  "I've  forgotten  to 
propose." 

"Need  you?  Proposals  sound  like  contracts  and  all 

371 


THE   TRAIL    OF   THE    HAWK 

those  other  dull  forms;  not  like — that  kiss.  .  .  .  See! 
There's  Pat  Kerr,  Jr.,  waving  to  us.  You  can  just  make 
him  out,  there  on  the  upper  balcony.  He  is  the  darlingest 
child,  with  ash-blond  hair  cut  Dutch  style.  I  wonder 
if  you  didn't  look  like  him  when  you  were  a  boy,  with 
your  light  hair?" 

"Not  a  chance.  I  was  a  grubby  kid.  Made  noises. 
.  .  .  Gee!  what  a  bully  place.  And  the  house!  .  .  .  Will 
you  marry  me?" 

"Yes,  I  will!  ...  It  u  a  dear  place.     Mrs.  Pat  is " 

"When?" 

" always  fussing  over  it;  she  plants  narcissuses  and 

crocuses  in  the  woods,  so  you  find  them  growing  wild." 

"I  like  those  awnings.  Against  the  white  walls.  .  .  . 
May  I  consider  that  we  are  engaged  then,  Miss  Winslow 
— engaged  for  the  next  marriage?" 

"Oh  no,  no,  not  engaged,  dear.  Don't  you  know  it's 
one  of  my  principles " 

"But  look " 

not  to  be  engaged,  Hawk?     Everybody  brings 

the  cunnin'  old  jokes  out  of  the  moth-balls  when  you're 
engaged.  I'll  marry  you,  but " 

"Marry  me  next  month — August?" 

"Nope." 

"September?" 

"Nope." 

"Please,  Ruthie.  Aw  yes,  September.  Nice  month, 
September  is.  Autumn.  Harvest  moon.  And  apples 
to  swipe.  Come  on.  September." 

"Well,  perhaps  September.  We'll  see.  Oh,  Hawk 
dear,  can  you  conceive  of  us  actually  sitting  here  and 
solemnly  discussing  being  married?  Us,  the  babes  in  the 
wood?  And  I've  only  known  you  three  days  or  so,  seems 
to  me.  .  .  .  Well,  as  I  was  saying,  perhaps  I'll  marry  you 
in  September  (um!  frightens  me  to  think  of  it;  frightens 
me  and  awes  me  and  amuses  me  to  death,  all  at  once). 
That  is,  I  shall  marry  you  unless  you  take  to  wearing 

372 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

pearl-gray  derbies  or  white  evening  ties  with  black  edging, 
or  kill  Mason  in  a  duel,  or  do  something  equally  disgrace- 
ful. But  engaged  I  will  not  be.  And  we'll  put  the  money 
for  a  diamond  ring  into  a  big  davenport.  .  .  .  Are  we  going 
to  be  dreadfully  poor?" 

"Oh,  not  pawn-shop  poor.  I  made  VanZile  boost  my 
salary,  last  week,  and  with  my  Touricar  stock  I'm  get- 
ting a  little  over  four  thousand  dollars  a  year." 

"Is  that  lots  or  little?" 

"Well,  it  '11  give  us  a  decent  apartment  and  a  nearly 
decent  maid,  I  guess.  And  if  the  Touricar  keeps  going, 
we  can  beat  it  off  for  a  year,  wandering,  after  maybe  three 
four  years." 

"I  hope  so.  Here  we  are!  That's  Mrs.  Pat  waiting 
for  us." 

The  Patton  Kerr  house,  set  near  the  top  of  the  highest 
hill  in  that  range  of  the  Berkshires,  stood  out  white  against 
a  slope  of  crisp  green;  an  old  manor  house  of  long  lines 
and  solid  beams,  with  striped  awnings  of  red  and  white, 
and  in  front  a  brick  terrace,  with  basket-chairs,  a  swing- 
ing couch,  and  a  wicker  tea-table  already  welcomingly 
spread  with  a  service  of  Royal  Doulton.  From  the  ter- 
race one  saw  miles  of  valley  and  hills,  and  villages  strung 
on  a  rambling  river.  The  valley  was  a  golden  bowl  filled 
with  the  peace  of  afternoon;  a  world  of  sun  and  listening 
woods. 

On  the  terrace  waited  a  woman  of  thirty-five,  of  clever 
face  a  bit  worn  at  the  edges,  carefully  coiffed  hair,  and 
careless  white  blouse  with  a  tweed  walking-skirt.  She 
was  gracefully  holding  out  her  hand,  greeting  Carl,  "It's 
terribly  good  of  you  to  come  clear  out  into  our  wilder- 
ness." She  was  interrupted  by  the  bouncing  appearance 
of  a  stocky,  handsome,  red-faced,  full-chinned,  curly-black- 
haired  man  of  forty,  in  riding-breeches  and  boots  and  a 
silk  shirt;  with  him  an  excited  small  boy  in  rompers — 
Patton  Kerr,  Sr.  and  Jr. 

"Here  you  are!"  Senior  observantly  remarked.  "Glad 

373 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

to  see  you,  Ericson.  You  and  Ruthie  been  a  deuce  of  a 
time  coming  up  from  town.  Holding  hands  along  the 
road,  eh?  Lord!  these  aviators!" 

"Pat!" 

"Animal!" 

protested  Mrs.  Kerr  and  Ruth,  simultaneously. 

"All  right.  I'll  be  good.  Saw  you  fly  at  Nassau 
Boulevard,  Ericson.  Turned  my  horn  loose  and  hooted 
till  they  thought  I  was  a  militant,  like  Ruthie  here.  Lord ! 
what  flying,  what  flying!  I'd  like  to  see  you  race  Wey- 
mann  and  Vedrines.  .  .  .  Ruthie,  will  you  show  Mr.  Eric- 
son  where  his  room  is,  or  has  poor  old  Pat  got  to  go  and 
drag  a  servant  away  from  reading  Town  Topics,  heh?" 

"I  will,  Pat,"  said  Ruth. 

"I  will,  daddy,"  cried  Pat,  Jr. 

"No,  my  son,  I  guess  maybe  Ruthie  had  better  do  it. 
There's  a  certain  look  in  her  eyes " 

"Basilisk!" 

"Salamander!" 

Ruth  and  Carl  passed  through  the  wide  colonial  hall, 
with  mahogany  tables  and  portraits  of  the  Kerrs  and  the 
sword  of  Colonel  Patton.  At  the  far  end  was  an  open 
door,  and  a  glimpse  of  an  old-fashioned  garden  radiant 
with  hollyhocks  and  Canterbury  bells.  It  was  a  world 
of  utter  content.  As  they  climbed  the  curving  stairs 
Ruth  tucked  her  arm  in  his,  saying: 

"Now  do  you  see  why  I  won't  be  engaged?  Pat  Kerr 
is  the  best  chum  in  the  world,  yet  he  finds  even  a  possible 
engagement  wildly  humorous — like  mothers-in-law  or 
poets  or  falling  on  your  ear." 

"But  gee!  Ruth,  you  are  going  to  marry  me?" 

"You  little  child!  My  little  boy  Hawk!  Of  course 
I'm  going  to  marry  you.  Do  you  think  I  would  miss  my 
chance  of  a  cabin  in  the  Rockies  ?  .  .  .  My  famous  Hawk 
what  everybody  cheered  at  Nassau  Boulevard!"  She 
opened  the  door  of  his  room  with  a  deferential,  "Thy 
chamber,  milord!  .  .  .  Come  down  quickly,"  she  said. 

374 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

"We  mustn't  miss  a  moment  of  these  days.  ...  I  am 
frank  with  you  about  how  glad  I  am  to  have  you  here. 
You  must  be  good  to  me;  you  will  prize  my  love  a  little, 
won't  you?"  Before  he  could  answer  she  had  run  away. 

After  half  home-comings  and  false  home-comings  the 
adventurer  had  really  come  home. 

He  inspected  the  gracious  room,  its  chintz  hangings, 
four  -  poster  bed,  low  wicker  chair  by  the  fireplace, 
fresh  Cherokee  roses  on  the  mantel;  a  room  of  cheerful- 
ness and  open  spaces.  He  stared  into  woods  where  a 
cool  light  lay  on  moss  and  fern.  He  did  not  need  to  re- 
member Ruth's  kisses.  For  each  breath  of  hilltop  air, 
each  emerald  of  moss,  each  shining  mahogany  surface 
in  the  room,  repeated  to  him  that  he  had  found  the  Grail, 
whose  other  name  is  love. 

Saturday,  they  loafed  over  breakfast,  the  sun  licking 
the  tree-tops  in  the  ravine  outside  the  windows;  and  they 
motored  with  the  Kerrs  to  Lenox,  returning  through 
the  darkness.  Till  midnight  they  talked  on  the  terrace. 
They  loafed  again,  the  next  morning,  and  let  the  fresh 
air  dissolve  the  office  grime  which  had  been  coating  his 
spirit.  They  were  so  startlingly  original  as  to  be  simple- 
hearted  country  lovers,  in  the  afternoon,  declining  Kerr's 
offer  of  a  car,  and  rambling  off  on  bicycles. 

From  a  rise  they  saw  water  gleaming  among  the 
trees.  The  sullen  green  of  pines  set  off  the  silvery  green 
of  barley,  and  an  orchard  climbed  the  next  rise;  the 
smoky  shadow  of  another  hill  range  promised  long,  cool 
forest  roads.  Crows  were  flying  overhead,  going  where 
they  would.  The  aviator  and  the  girl  who  read  psy- 
chology, modern  lovers,  stood  hand  in  hand,  as  though 
the  age  of  machinery  were  a  myth;  as  though  he  were 
a  piping  minstrel  and  she  a  shepherdess.  Before  them 
was  the  open  road  and  all  around  them  the  hum  of  bees. 

A  close,  listless  heat  held  Monday  afternoon,  even  on 
the  hilltop.  The  clay  tennis-court  was  baking;  the  worn 
bricks  of  the  terrace  reflected  a  furnace  glow,  The  Kerr§ 

375 


THE    TRAIL    OF    THE    HAWK 

had  disappeared  for  a  nap.  Carl,  lounging  with  Ruth  on 
the  swinging  couch  in  the  shade,  thought  of  the  slaves  in 
New  York  offices  and  tenements.  Then,  because  he 
would  himself  be  back  in  an  office  next  day,  he  let  the 
glare  of  the  valley  soothe  him  with  its  wholesome  heat. 

"Certainly  would  like  a  swim,"  he  remarked.  "Couldn't 
we  bike  down  to  Fisher's  Pond,  or  maybe  take  the 
Ford?" 

"Let's.     But  there's  no  bath-house." 

"Put  a  bathing-suit  under  your  dress.  Sun  '11  dry  it 
in  no  time,  after  the  swim." 

"As  you  command,  my  liege."  And  she  ran  in  to 
change. 

They  motored  down  to  Fisher's  Pond,  which  is  a  lake, 
and  stopped  in  a  natural  woodland-opening  like  a  dim- 
lighted  greenroom.  From  it  stretched  the  enameled 
lake,  the  farther  side  reflecting  unbroken  woods.  The 
nearer  water-edge  was  exquisite  in  its  clearness.  They 
saw  perch  fantastically  floating  over  the  pale  sand  bot- 
tom, among  scattered  reeds  whose  watery  green  stalks 
were  like  the  thin  columns  of  a  dancing-hall  for  small 
fishes.  The  surface  of  the  lake,  satiny  as  the  palm  of  a 
girl's  hand,  broke  in  the  tiniest  of  ripples  against  white 
quartz  pebbles  on  the  hot  shore.  Cool,  flashing,  golden- 
sanded,  the  lake  coaxed  them  out  of  their  forest  room. 

"A  lot  like  the  Minnesota  lakes,  only  smaller,"  said 
Carl.  "I'm  going  right  in.  About  ready  for  a  swim? 
Come  on." 

"I'm  af-fraid!"  She  suddenly  plumped  on  the  earth 
and  hugged  her  skirts  about  her  ankles. 

"Why,  blessed,  what  you  scared  of?  No  sharks  here, 
and  no  undertow.  Nice  white  sand " 

"Oh,  Hawk,  I  was  silly.  I  felt  I  was  such  an  independ- 
ent modern  woman  a-a-and  I  aren't!  I've  always  said 
it  was  silly  for  girls  to  swim  in  a  woman's  bathing-suit. 
Skirts  are  so  cumbersome.  So  I  put  on  a  boy's  bathing- 
§uit  under  my  dress — and — I'm  terribly  embarrassed." 

376 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"Why,  blessed Well,  I  guess  you'll  have  to  de- 
cide." His  voice  was  somewhat  shaky.  "Awful  scared 
of  Carl?" 

"Yes!  I  thought  I  wouldn't  be,  with  you,  but  I'm 
self-conscious  as  can  be." 

"Well,  gee!  I  don't  know.  Of  course Well,  I'll 

jump  in,  and  you  can  decide." 

He  peeled  off  his  white  flannels  and  stood  in  his  blue 
bathing-suit,  not  statue-like,  not  very  brown  now,  but 
trim-waisted,  shapely  armed,  wonderfully  clean  of  neck 
and  jaw.  With  a  "Wheee!"  he  dashed  into  the  water 
and  swam  out,  overhand. 

As  he  turned  over  and  glanced  back,  his  heart  caught 
to  see  her  standing  on  the  creamy  sand,  a  shy,  elfin  figure 
in  a  boy's  bathing-suit  of  black  wool,  woman  and  slim 
boy  in  one,  silken-throated  and  graceful-limbed,  curi- 
ously smaller  than  when  dressed.  Her  white  skirt  and 
blouse  lay  tumbled  about  her  ankles.  She  raised  rosy 
arms  to  hide  her  flushed  face  and  her  eyes,  as  she  cried: 

"Don't  look!" 

He  obediently  swam  on,  with  a  tenderness  more  poig- 
nant than  longing.  He  heard  her  splashing  behind  him, 
and  turned  again,  to  see  her  racing  through  the  water. 
Those  soft  yet  not  narrow  shoulders  rose  and  fell  sturdily 
under  the  wet  black  wool,  her  eyes  shone,  and  she  was 
all  comradely  boy  save  for  her  dripping,  splendid  hair. 
Singing,  "Come  on,  lazy!"  she  headed  across  the  pond. 
He  swam  beside  her,  reveling  in  the  well-being  of  cool 
water  and  warm  air,  till  they  reached  the  solemn  shade 
beneath  the  trees  on  the  other  side,  and  floated  in  the  dark, 
still  water,  splashing  idle  hands,  gazing  into  forest  hol- 
lows, spying  upon  the  brisk  business  of  squirrels  among 
the  acorns. 

Back  at  their  greenwood  room,  Ruth  wrapped  her 
sailor  blouse  about  her,  and  they  squatted  like  un-self- 
conscious  children  on  the  beach,  while  from  a  field  a  dis- 
tant locust  fiddled  his  August  fandango  and  in  flame- 

377 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

colored  pride  an  oriole  went  by.  Fresh  sky,  sunfish  like 
tropic  shells  in  the  translucent  water,  arching  reeds  dip- 
ping their  olive-green  points  in  the  water,  wavelets  rust- 
ling against  a  gray  neglected  rowboat,  and  beside  him 
Ruth. 

Musingly  they  built  a  castle  of  sand.  An  hour  of 
understanding  so  complete  that  it  made  the  heart  melan- 
choly. When  he  sighed,  "Getting  late;  come  on,  blessed; 
we're  dry  now,"  it  seemed  that  they  could  never  again 
know  such  rapt  tranquillity. 

Yet  they  did.  For  that  evening  when  they  stood  on 
the  terrace,  trying  to  forget  that  he  must  leave  her  and 
go  back  to  the  lonely  city  in  the  morning,  when  the  mist 
reached  chilly  tentacles  up  from  the  valley,  they  kissed 
a  shy  good-by,  and  Carl  knew  that  life's  real  adventure 
is  not  adventuring,  but  rinding  the  playmate  with  whom 
to  quest  life's  meaning. 


CHAPTER  XL 

AHTER  six  festival  months  of  married  life — in  April 
or  May,  1914 — the  happy  Mrs.  Carl  Ericson  did  not 
have  many  "modern  theories  of  marriage  in  general," 
though  it  was  her  theory  that  she  had  such  theories. 
Like  a  majority  of  intelligent  men  and  women,  Ruth  was, 
in  her  rebellion  against  the  canonical  marriage  of  slipper- 
warming  and  obedience,  emphatic  but  vague.  She  was 
of  precise  opinion  regarding  certain  details  of  marriage, 
but  in  general  as  inconsistent  as  her  library.  It  is  a  hu- 
man characteristic  to  be  belligerently  sure  as  to  whether 
one  prefers  plush  or  rattan  upholstery  on  car  seats — but 
not  to  consider  whether  government  ownership  of  rail- 
roads will  improve  upholstering;  to  know  with  certainty 
of  perception  that  it  is  a  bore  to  have  one's  husband  laugh 
at  one's  pet  economy,  of  matches  or  string  or  ice — but 
to  be  blandly  willing  to  leave  all  theories  of  polygamy  and 
polyandry,  monogamy  and  varietism,  to  the  clever  Rus- 
sian Jews. 

As  regards  details  Ruth  definitely  did  want  a  bedroom 
of  her  own;  a  desire  which  her  mother  would  have  re- 
garded as  somehow  immodest.  She  definitely  did  want 
shaving  and  hair-brushing  kept  in  the  background.  She 
did  not  want  Carl  the  lover  to  drift  into  Carl  the  hus- 
band. She  did  not  want  them  to  lose  touch  with  other 
people.  And  she  wanted  to  keep  the  spice  of  madness 
which  from  the  first  had  seasoned  their  comradeship. 

These  things  she  delightfully  had,  in  May,  1914. 

They  were  largely  due  to  her  own  initiative.  Carl's 
drifting  theories  of  social  structure  concerned  for  the 

25  379 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

most  part  the  wages  of  workmen  and  the  ridiculousness 
of  class  distinctions.  Reared  in  the  farming  district,  the 
amateur  college,  the  garage,  and  the  hangar,  he  had  not, 
despite  imagination,  devoted  two  seconds  to  such  details 
as  the  question  of  whether  there  was  freedom  and  repose — 
not  to  speak  of  a  variety  of  taste  as  regards  opening  win- 
dows and  sleeping  diagonally  across  a  bed — in  having 
separate  bedrooms.  Much  though  he  had  been  per- 
suaded to  read  of  modern  fiction,  his  race  still  believed 
that  marriage  bells  and  roses  were  the  proper  portions 
of  marriage  to  think  about. 

It  was  due  to  Ruth,  too,  that  they  had  so  amiable  a 
flat.  Carl  had  been  made  careless  of  surroundings  by 
years  of  hotels  and  furnished  rooms.  There  was  less  real 
significance  for  him  in  the  beauty  of  his  first  home  than 
in  the  fact  that  they  two  had  a  bath-room  of  their  own; 
that  he  no  longer  had  to  go,  clad  in  a  drab  bath-robe, 
laden  with  shaving  materials  and  a  towel  and  talcum 
powder  and  a  broken  hand-mirror  and  a  tooth-brush,  like 
a  perambulating  drug-store  toilet-counter,  down  a  board- 
ing-house hall  to  that  modified  hall  bedroom  with  a  tin 
tub  which  his  doctor-landlord  had  called  a  bath-room. 
Pictures,  it  must  be  admitted,  give  a  room  an  air;  pleas- 
ant it  is  to  sit  in  large  chairs  by  fireplaces  and  feel  your- 
self a  landed  gentleman.  But  nothing  filled  Carl  with  a 
more  delicate — and  truly  spiritual — satisfaction  than  hav- 
ing a  porcelain  tub,  plenty  of  hot  water,  and  the  privilege 
of  leaving  his  shaving-brush  in  the  Ericson  bath-room 
with  a  fair  certainty  of  finding  it  there  when  he  wanted 
to  shave  in  a  hurry. 

But,  careless  of  surroundings  or  not,  Carl  was  stirred 
when  on  their  return  from  honeymooning  in  the  Adiron- 
dacks  he  carried  Ruth  over  the  threshold  and  they  stood 
together  in  the  living-room  of  their  home. 

It  was  a  room  to  live  in  and  laugh  in.  The  woodwork 
was  white-enameled;  the  walls  covered  with  gray  Jap- 
anese paper.  There  were  no  portieres  between  living- 

380 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

room  and  dining-room  and  small  hall,  so  that  the  three 
rooms,  with  their  light-reflecting  walls,  gave  an  effect 
of  spaciousness  to  rather  a  cramped  and  old-fashioned 
apartment.  There  were  not  many  pictures  and  no  bric- 
a-brac,  yet  the  rooms  were  not  bare,  but  clean  and  trim 
and  distinguished,  with  the  large  davenport  and  the  wing- 
chair,  chintz-cushioned  brown  willow  chairs,  and  Ruth's 
upright  piano,  excellent  mahogany,  and  a  few  good  rugs. 
There  were  only  two  or  three  vases,  and  they  genuinely 
intended  for  holding  flowers,  and  there  was  a  bare  mantel- 
piece that  rested  the  eyes,  over  the  fuzzily  clean  gas-log. 
The  pictures  were  chosen  because  they  led  the  imagina- 
tion on — etchings  and  color  prints,  largely  by  unknown 
artists,  like  windows  looking  on  delightful  country.  The 
chairs  assembled  naturally  in  groups.  The  whole  unit  of 
three  rooms  suggested  people  talking.  ...  It  was  home, 
first  and  last,  though  it  was  one  cell  in  one  layer  of  a 
seven-story  building,  on  a  street  walled  in  with  such 
buildings,  in  a  city  which  lined  up  more  than  three  hundred 
of  such  streets  from  its  southern  tip  to  its  northern  limit 
along  the  Hudson,  and  threw  in  a  couple  of  million  people 
in  Brooklyn  and  the  Bronx. 

They  lived  in  the  Nineties,  between  Broadway  and 
Riverside  Drive;  a  few  blocks  from  the  Winslow  house 
in  distance,  but  one  generation  away  in  the  matter  of 
decoration.  The  apartment-house  itself  was  compara- 
tively old-fashioned,  with  an  intermittent  elevator  run 
by  an  intermittent  negro  youth  who  gave  most  of  his  time 
to  the  telephone  switchboard  and  mysterious  duties  in 
the  basement;  also  with  a  down-stairs  hall  that  was  nar- 
row and  carpeted  and  lined  with  offensively  dark  wood. 
But  they  could  see  the  Hudson  from  their  living-room 
on  the  sixth  floor  at  the  back  of  the  house  (the  agent  as- 
sured them  that  probably  not  till  the  end  of  time  would 
there  be  anything  but  low,  private  houses  between  them 
and  the  river);  they  were  not  haunted  by  Aunt  Emma 
Truegate  Winslow;  and  Ruth,  who  had  long  been  op- 

381 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

pressed  by  late-Victorian  bric-a-brac  and  American 
Louis  XVth  furniture,  so  successfully  adopted  Elimina- 
tion as  the  key-note  that  there  was  not  one  piece  of  furni- 
ture bought  for  the  purpose  of  indicating  that  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Carl  Ericson  were  well-to-do. 

She  dared  to  tell  friends  who  before  the  wedding  in- 
quired what  she  wanted,  that  checks  were  welcome,  and 
need  not  be  monogrammed.  Even  Aunt  Emma  had 
been  willing  to  send  a  check,  provided  they  were  properly 
married  in  St.  George's  Church.  Consequently  their  six 
rooms  showed  a  remarkable  absence  of  such  usual  wed- 
ding presents  as  prints  of  the  smugly  smiling  and  eupeptic 
Mona  Lisa,  three  muffin-stands  in  three  degrees  of  mar- 
quetry, three  electroliers,  four  punch-bowls,  three  sets  of 
almond-dishes,  a  pair  of  bird-carvers  that  did  not  carve, 
a  bust  of  Dante  in  New  Art  marble,  or  a  de  luxe  set  of 
De  Maupassant  translated  by  a  worthy  lady  with  a 
French  lexicon.  Instead,  they  bought  what  they  wanted 
— rather  an  impertinent  thing  to  do,  but,  like  most  im- 
pertinences, thoroughly  worth  while.  Their  living-room 
was  their  own.  Carl's  bedroom  was  white  and  simple, 
though  spotty  with  aviation  medals  and  silver  cups  and 
monoplanes  sketchily  rendered  in  gold,  and  signed  photo- 
graphs of  aviators.  Ruth's  bedroom  was  also  plain  and 
white  and  dull  Japanese  gray,  a  simple  room  with  that 
simplicity  of  hand-embroidery,  real  lace,  and  fine  linen 
appreciated  by  exclamatory  women  friends. 

She  taught  Carl  to  say  "dahg"  instead  of  "dawg"  for 
"dog";  "wawta"  instead  of  "wotter"  for  "water." 
Whether  she  was  more  correct  in  her  pronunciation  or 
not  does  not  matter;  New  York  said  "dahg,"  and  it 
amused  him  just  then  to  be  very  Eastern.  She  taught 
him  the  theory  of  house-lighting.  Carl  had  no  fanatical 
objection  to  unshaded  incandescent  bulbs  glaring  from 
the  ceiling.  But  he  came  to  like  the  shaded  electric 
lamps  which  Ruth  installed  in  the  living-room.  When 
she  introduced  four  candles  as  sole  lighting  of  the  dining- 

382 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

room  table,  however,  he  grumbled  loudly  at  his  inability 
to  see  what  he  was  eating.  She  retired  to  her  bedroom, 
and  he  huffily  went  out  to  get  a  cigar.  At  the  cigar- 
counter  he  repented  of  all  the  unkind  things  he  had  ever 
done  or  could  possibly  do,  and  returned  to  eat  humble 
pie — and  eat  it  by  candle-light.  Inside  of  two  weeks  one 
of  the  things  which  Carl  Ericson  had  always  known  was 
that  the  harmonious  candle-light  brought  them  close  to- 
gether at  dinner. 

The  teaching,  in  this  Period  of  Adjustments,  was  not 
all  on  Ruth's  part.  It  was  due  to  Carl's  insistence  that 
she  tried  to  discover  what  her  theological  beliefs  really 
were.  She  admitted  that  only  at  twilight  vespers,  with 
a  gale  of  violins  in  an  arched  roof,  did  she  really  worship 
in  church.  She  did  not  believe  that  priests  and  ministers, 
who  seemed  to  be  ordinary  men  as  regards  earthly  things, 
had  any  extraordinary  knowledge  of  the  mysteries  of 
heaven.  Yet  she  took  it  for  granted  that  she  was  a  good 
Christian.  She  rarely  disagreed  with  the  Dunleavys, 
who  were  Catholics;  or  her  Aunt  Emma,  who  regarded 
anything  but  High  Church  Episcopalianism  as  bad  form; 
or  her  brother  Mason,  who  was  an  uneasy  Unitarian;  or 
Carl,  who  was  an  unaggressive  agnostic. 

Of  the  four  it  was  Carl  who  seemed  to  have  the  great- 
est interest  in  religions.  He  blurted  out  such  monologues 
as,  "I  wonder  if  it  isn't  pure  egotism  that  makes  a  person 
believe  that  the  religion  he  is  born  to  is  the  best?  My 
country,  my  religion,  my  wife,  my  business — we  think  that 
whatever  is  ours  is  necessarily  sacred,  or,  in  other  words, 
that  we  are  gods — and  then  we  call  it  faith  and  patriotism ! 
The  Hindu  or  the  Christian  is  equally  ready  to  prove  to 
you — and  mind  you,  he  may  be  a  wise  old  man  with  a 
beard — that  his  national  religion  is  obviously  the  only 
one.  Find  out  what  you  yourself  really  do  think,  and 
if  you  turn  out  a  Sun-worshiper  or  a  Hard-shell  Baptist, 
why,  good  luck.  If  you  don't  think  for  yourself,  then 
you're  admitting  that  your  theory  of  happiness  is  the  old 

383 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

dog  asleep  in  the  sun.  And  maybe  he  is  happier  than  the 
student.  But  I  think  you  like  to  experiment  with  life." 

His  arguments  were  neither  original  nor  especially 
logical;  they  were  largely  given  to  him  by  Bone  Still- 
man,  Professor  Frazer,  and  chance  paragraphs  in  stray 
radical  magazines.  But  to  Ruth,  politely  reared  in  a 
house  with  three  maids,  where  it  was  as  tactless  to  discuss 
God  as  to  discuss  sex,  his  defiances  seemed  terrifyingly 
new.  .  .  .  She  was  not  the  first  who  had  complacently  gone 
to  church  after  reading  Bernard  Shaw.  .  .  .  But  she  did 
try  to  follow  Carl's  loose  reasoning;  to  find  out  what  she 
thought  and  what  the  spiritual  fashions  of  her  neighbor- 
hood made  her  think  she  thought. 

The  process  gave  her  many  anxious  hours  of  alternat- 
ing impatience  with  fixed  religious  dogmas,  and  loneliness 
for  the  comfortable  refuge  of  a  personal  God,  whose 
yearning  had  spoken  to  her  in  the  Gregorian  chant.  She 
could  never  get  herself  to  read  more  than  two  chapters 
of  any  book  on  the  subject,  nor  did  she  get  much  light 
from  conversation.  One  set  of  people  supposed  that 
Christianity  had  so  entirely  disappeared  from  intelligent 
circles  that  it  was  not  worth  discussion;  another  set  sup- 
posed that  no  one  but  cranks  ever  thought  of  doubting 
the  essentials  of  Christianity,  and  that,  therefore,  it  was 
not  worth  discussion;  and  to  a  few  superb  women  whom 
she  knew,  their  religion  was  too  sweet  a  reality  to  be  sub- 
jected to  the  noisy  chatter  of  discussion.  Gradually  Ruth 
forgot  to  think  often  of  the  matter,  but  it  was  always 
back  in  her  mind. 

They  were  happy,  Carl  and  Ruth.  To  their  flat  came 
such  of  Ruth's  friends  as  she  kept  because  she  liked  them 
for  themselves,  with  a  fantastic  assortment  of  personages 
and  awkward  rovers  whom  the  ex-aviator  knew.  The 
Ericsons  made  an  institution  of  "bruncheon" — break- 
fast-luncheon— at  which  coffee  and  eggs  and  deviled  kid- 
neys, a  table  of  auction  bridge  and  a  davenport  of  talk 

384 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

and  a  wing-chair  of  Sunday  papers,  were  to  be  had  on 
Sunday  morning  from  ten  to  one.  At  bruncheon  Walter 
MacMonnies  told  to  Florence  Crewden  his  experiences 
in  exploring  Southern  Greenland  by  aeroplane  with  the 
Schliess-Banning  expedition.  At  bruncheon  Bobby  Wins- 
low,  now  an  interne,  talked  baseball  with  Carl.  At 
bruncheon  Phil  Dunleavy  regarded  cynically  all  the  peo- 
ple he  did  not  know  and  played  piquet  in  a  corner  with 
Ruth's  father. 

Carl  and  Ruth  joined  the  Peace  Waters  Country  Club, 
and  in  the  spring  of  1914  went  there  nearly  every  Satur- 
day afternoon  for  tennis  and  a  dance.  Carl  refused  golf, 
however;  he  always  repeated  a  shabby  joke  about  the 
shame  of  taking  advantage  of  such  a  tiny  ball. 

He  seemed  content  to  stick  to  office,  home,  and  tennis- 
court.  It  was  Ruth  who  planned  their  week-end  trips, 
proposed  at  8  A.M.  Saturday,  and  begun  at  two  that 
afternoon.  They  explored  the  tangled  rocks  and  woods 
of  Lloyd's  Neck,  on  Long  Island,  sleeping  in  an  abandoned 
shack,  curled  together  like  kittens.  They  swooped  on  a 
Dutch  village  in  New  Jersey,  spent  the  night  with  an  old 
farmer,  and  attended  the  Dutch  Reformed  church.  They 
tramped  from  New  Haven  to  Hartford,  over  Easter. 
Carl  was  always  ready  for  their  gipsy  journeys;  he  re- 
sponded to  Ruth's  visions  of  foaming  South  Sea  isles; 
but  he  rarely  sketched  such  pictures  himself.  He  had 
given  all  of  himself  to  joy  in  Ruth.  Like  many  men 
called  "adventurers,"  he  was  ready  for  anything  but  con- 
tent with  anything. 

It  was  Ruth  who  was  finding  new  voyages.  She  kept 
up  her  settlement  work  and  progressed  to  an  active  in- 
terest in  the  Women's  Trade  Union  League  and  took 
part  in  picketing  during  a  Panama  Hat-Workers'  strike. 
She  may  have  had  more  curiosity  than  principle,  but  she 
did  badger  policemen  pluckily.  She  was  studying  Italian, 
the  Montessori  method,  cooking.  She  taught  new  dishes 
to  her  maid.  She  adopted  a  careless  suggestion  of  Carl 

385 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

and  voluntarily  increased  the  maid's  salary,  thereby 
shaking  the  rock-ribbed  foundations  of  Upper  West  Side 
society. 

In  nothing  did  she  find  greater  satisfaction  than  in 
being  neither  "the  bride"  nor  "the  little  woman"  nor 
any  like  degrading  thing  which  recently  married  girls 
are  by  their  sentimental  spinster  friends  expected  to  be. 
She  did  not  whisper  the  intimate  details  of  her  honey- 
moon to  other  young  married  women;  she  did  not  run 
about  quaintly  and  tinily  telling  her  difficulties  with  house- 
hold work. 

When  a  purring,  baby-talking  acquaintance  gurgled: 
"How  did  the  Ruthie  bride  spend  her  morning?  Did  she 
cook  some  little  dainty  for  her  husband  ?  Nothing  bour- 
geois, I'm  sure!"  in  reply  Ruth  pleasantly  observed: 
"Not  a  chance.  The  Ruthie  bride  cussed  out  the  janitor 
for  not  shooting  up  a  dainty  cabbage  on  the  dumb-waiter, 
and  then  counted  up  her  husband's  cigarette  coupons  and 
skipped  right  down  to  the  premium  parlors  with  'em  and 
got  him  a  pair  of  pale-blue  Boston  garters  and  a  cunning 
granite-ware  stew-pan,  and  then  sponged  lunch  off  Olive 
Dunleavy.  But  nothing  bourgeois!" 

Such  experiences,  told  to  Carl,  he  found  diverting.  He 
seemed,  in  the  spring  of  1914,  to  want  no  others. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

THE  apparently  satisfactory  development  of  the  Touri- 
car  in  the  late  spring  of  1914  was  the  result  of  an 
uneconomical  expenditure  of  energy  on  the  part  of  Carl. 
Personally  he  followed  by  letter  the  trail  of  every  amateur 
aviator,  every  motoring  big-game  hunter.  He  never  let 
up  for  an  afternoon.  VanZile  had  lost  interest  in  the 
whole  matter.  Whenever  Carl  thought  of  how  much  the 
development  of  the  Touricar  business  depended  upon  him- 
self, he  was  uneasy  about  the  future,  and  bent  more  close- 
ly over  his  desk.  On  his  way  home,  swaying  on  a  subway 
strap,  his  pleasant  sensation  of  returning  to  Ruth  was 
interrupted  by  worry  in  regard  to  things  he  might  have 
done  at  the  office.  Nights  he  dreamed  of  lists  of  "pros- 
pects." 

Late  in  May  he  was  disturbed  for  several  days  by  head- 
aches, lassitude,  nausea.  He  lied  to  Ruth:  "Guess  I've 
eaten  something  at  lunch  that  was  a  little  off.  You  know 
what  these  restaurants  are."  He  admitted,  however,  that 
he  felt  like  a  Symptom.  He  stuck  to  the  office,  though 
his  chief  emotion  about  life  and  business  was  that  he 
wished  to  go  off  somewhere  and  lie  down  and  die  gently. 

Directly  after  a  Sunday  bruncheon,  at  which  he  was 
silent  and  looked  washed  out,  he  went  to  bed  with  typhoid 
fever. 

For  six  weeks  he  was  ill.  He  seemed  daily  to  lose  more 
of  the  boyishness  which  all  his  life  had  made  him  want 
to  dance  in  the  sun.  That  loss  was  to  Ruth  like  a  snicker- 
ing hobgoblin  attending  the  specter  of  death.  Staying  by 
him  constantly,  forgetting,  in  the  intensity  of  her  care,  even 

387 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

to  want  credit  for  virtue,  taking  one  splash  at  her  tired 
eyes  with  boric  acid  and  dashing  back  to  his  bed,  she 
mourned  and  mourned  for  her  lost  boy,  while  she  hid  her 
fear  and  kept  her  blouses  fresh  and  her  hair  well-coiffed, 
and  mothered  the  stern  man  who  lay  so  dreadfully  still 
in  the  bed.  ...  He  was  not  shaved  every  day;  he  had  a 
pale  beard  under  his  hollow  cheeks.  .  .  .  Even  when  he 
was  out  of  delirium,  even  when  he  was  comparatively 
strong,  he  never  said  anything  gaily  foolish  for  the  sake 
of  being  young  and  noisy  with  her. 

During  convalescence  Carl  was  so  wearily  gentle  that 
she  hoped  the  little  boy  she  loved  was  coming  back  to 
dwell  in  him.  But  the  Hawk's  wings  seemed  broken. 
For  the  first  time  Carl  was  afraid  of  life.  He  sat  and 
worried,  going  over  the  possibilities  of  the  Touricar,  and 
the  positions  he  might  get  if  the  Touricar  failed.  He  was 
willing  to  loaf  by  the  window  all  day,  his  eyes  on  a  narrow, 
blood-red  stripe  in  the  Navajo  blanket  on  his  knees,  along 
which  he  incessantly  ran  a  finger-nail,  back  and  forth, 
back  and  forth,  for  whole  quarter-hours,  while  she  read 
aloud  from  Kipling  and  London  and  Conrad,  hoping  to 
rekindle  the  spirit  of  daring. 

One  sweet  drop  was  in  their  cup  of  iron.  As  woodland 
playmates  they  could  never  have  known  such  intimacy 
as  hovered  about  them  when  she  rested  her  head  lightly 
against  his  knees  and  they  watched  the  Hudson,  the 
storms  and  flurries  of  light  on  its  waves,  the  windy  clouds 
and  the  processional  of  barges,  the  beetle-like  ferries  and  the 
great  steamers  for  Albany.  They  talked  in  half  sentences, 

understanding  the  rest:  "Tough  in  winter "  "Might 

be  good  trip "  Carl's  hand  was  always  demanding 

her  thick  hair,  but  he  stroked  it  gently.  The  coarse, 
wholesome  vigor  was  drained  from  him;  part  even  of  his 
slang  went  with  it;  his  "Gee!"  was  not  explosive. 

He  took  to  watching  her  like  a  solemn  baby,  when  she 
moved  about  the  room;  thus  she  found  the  little  boy 
Carl  again;  laughed  full-throated  and  secretly  cried  over 

388 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

him,  as  his  sternness  passed  into  a  wistful  obedience. 
He  was  not  quite  the  same  impudent  boy  whose  naughti- 
ness she  had  loved.  But  the  good  child  who  came  in  his 
place  did  trust  her  so,  depend  upon  her  so.  ... 

When  Carl  was  strong  enough  they  went  for  three  weeks 
to  Point  Pleasant,  on  the  Jersey  coast,  where  the  pines 
and  breakers  from  the  open  sea  healed  his  weakness  and 
his  multitudinous  worries.  They  even  swam,  once,  and 
Carl  played  at  learning  two  new  dances,  strangely  called 
the  "fox  trot"  and  the  "lu  lu  fado."  Their  hotel  was  a 
vast  barn,  all  porches,  white  flannels,  and  handsome  young 
Jews  chattering  tremendously  with  young  Jewesses;  but 
its  ball-room  floor  was  smooth,  and  Ruth  had  lacked  music 
and  excitement  for  so  long  that  she  danced  every  night, 
and  conducted  an  amiable  flirtation  with  a  mysterious 
young  man  of  Harvard  accent,  Jewish  features,  fine  brown 
eyes,  and  tortoise-shell-rimmed  eye-glasses,  while  Carl 
looked  on,  a  contented  wall-flower. 

They  came  back  to  town  with  ocean  breeze  and  pine 
scent  in  their  throats  and  sea-sparkle  in  their  eyes — and 
Carl  promptly  tied  himself  to  the  office  desk  as  though 
sickness  and  recovery  had  never  given  him  a  vision  of 
play. 

Ruth  had  not  taken  the  Point  Pleasant  dances  seriously, 
but  as  day  on  day  she  stifled  in  a  half-darkened  flat  that 
summer,  she  sometimes  sobbed  at  the  thought  of  the 
moon-path  on  the  sea,  the  reflection  of  lights  on  the  ball- 
room floor,  the  wavelike  swish  of  music-mad  feet. 

The  flat  was  hot,  dead.  The  summer  heat  was  unre- 
lenting as  bedclothes  drawn  over  the  head  and  lashed 
down.  Flies  in  sneering  circles  mocked  the  listless  hand 
she  flipped  at  them.  Too  hot  to  wear  many  clothes,  yet 
hating  the  disorder  of  a  flimsy  negligee,  she  panted  by  a 
window,  while  the  venomous  sun  glared  on  tin  roofs,  and 
a  few  feet  away  snarled  the  ceaseless  trrrrrr  of  a  steam- 
riveter  that  was  erecting  new  flats  to  shut  off  their  view 
of  the  Hudson.  In  the  lava-paved  back  yard  was  the  in- 

389 


THE   TRAIL   OF  THE   HAWK 

sistent  filelike  voice  of  the  janitor's  son,  who  kept  piping: 
"Haaay,  Bil-lay,  hey;  Billy 's  got  a  girl!  Hey,  Billy  Js  got 
a  girl !  Haaay,  Bil-lay !"  She  imagined  herself  going  down 
and  slaughtering  him;  vividly  saw  herself  waiting  for  the 
elevator,  venturing  into  the  hot  sepulcher  of  the  back 
areaway,  and  there  becoming  too  languid  to  complete  the 
task  of  ridding  the  world  of  the  dear  child.  She  was  hor- 
rified to  discover  what  she  had  been  imagining,  and  pres- 
ently imagined  it  all  over  again. 

Two  blocks  across  from  her,  seen  through  the  rising 
walls  of  the  new  apartment-houses,  were  the  drab  win- 
dows of  a  group  of  run-down  tenements,  which  broke  the 
sleek  respectability  of  the  well-to-do  quarter.  In  those 
windows  Ruth  observed  foreign-looking,  idle  women, 
not  very  clean,  who  had  nothing  to  do  after  they  had  com- 
pleted half  an  hour  of  slovenly  housework  in  the  morning. 
They  watched  their  neighbors  breathlessly.  They  peered 
out  with  the  petty  virulent  curiosity  of  the  workless  at 
whatever  passed  in  the  streets  below  them.  Fifty  times 
a  day  they  could  be  seen  to  lean  far  out  on  their  fire- 
escapes  and  follow  with  slowly  craning  necks  and  un- 
blinking eyes  the  passing  of  something — ice-wagons, 
undertakers'  wagons,  ole-clo'  men,  Ruth  surmised.  The 
rest  of  the  time,  ragged-haired  and  greasy  of  wrapper, 
gum-chewing  and  yawning,  they  rested  their  unlovely 
stomachs  on  discolored  sofa-cushions  on  the  window-sills 
and  waited  for  something  to  appear.  Two  blocks  away 
they  were — yet  to  Ruth  they  seemed  to  be  in  the  room 
with  her,  claiming  her  as  one  of  their  sisterhood.  For 
now  she  was  a  useless  woman,  as  they  were.  She  raged 
with  the  thought  that  she  might  grow  to  be  like  them 
in  every  respect — she,  Ruth  Winslow!  .  .  .  She  wondered 
if  any  of  them  were  Norwegians  named  Ericsbn.  .  .  .  With 
the  fascination  of  dread  she  watched  them  as  closely  as 
they  watched  the  world  with  the  hypnotization  of  un- 
speakable hopelessness.  .  .  .  She  had  to  find  her  work, 
something  for  which  the  world  needed  her,  lest  she  be 

390 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

left  here,  useless  and  unhappy  in  a  flat.  In  her  kitchen 
she  was  merely  an  intruder  on  the  efficient  maid,  and 
there  was  no  nursery. 

She  sat  apprehensively  on  the  edge  of  a  chair,  hating 
the  women  at  the  windows,  hating  the  dull,  persistent 
flies,  hating  the  wetness  of  her  forehead  and  the  damp- 
ness of  her  palm;  repenting  of  her  hate  and  hating  again 
— and  taking  another  cold  bath  to  be  fresh  for  the  home- 
coming of  Carl,  the  tired  man  whom  she  had  to  mother 
and  whom,  of  all  the  world,  she  did  not  hate. 

Even  on  the  many  cool  days  when  the  streets  and  the 
flat  became  tolerable  and  the  vulture  women  of  the  tene- 
ments ceased  to  exist  for  her,  Ruth  was  not  much  in- 
terested, whether  she  went  out  or  some  one  came  to 
see  her.  Every  one  she  knew,  except  for  the  Dunleavys 
and  a  few  others,  was  out  of  town,  and  she  was  tired  of 
Olive  Dunleavy's  mirth  and  shallow  gossip.  After  her 
days  with  Carl  in  the  valley  of  the  shadow,  Olive  was  to 
her  a  stranger  giggling  about  strange  people.  Phil  was 
rather  better.  He  occasionally  came  in  for  tea,  poked 
about,  stared  at  the  color  prints,  and  said  cryptic  things 
about  feminism  and  playing  squash. 

Her  settlement-house  classes  were  closed  for  the  sum- 
mer. She  brooded  over  the  settlement  work  and  accused 
herself  of  caring  less  for  people  than  for  the  sensation  of 
being  charitable.  She  wondered  if  she  was  a  hypocrite. 
.  .  .  Then  she  would  take  another  cold  bath  to  be  fresh 
for  the  home-coming  of  Carl,  the  tired  man  whom  she  had 
to  mother,  and  toward  whom,  of  all  the  world's  energies, 
she  knew  that  she  was  not  hypocritical. 

This  is  not  the  story  of  Ruth  Winslow,  but  of  Carl 
Ericson.  Yet  Ruth's  stifling  days  are  a  part  of  it,  for  her 
unhappiness  meant  as  much  to  him  as  it  did  to  her.  In 
the  swelter  of  his  office,  overlooking  motor-hooting,  gaso- 
line-reeking Broadway,  he  was  av*are  that  Ruth  was  in 
the  flat,  buried  alive.  He  made  plans  for  her  going  away, 
but  she  refused  to  desert  him.  He  tried  to  arrange  for  a 

391 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

week  more  of  holiday  for  them  both;  he  could  not;  he 
came  to  understand  that  he  was  now'completely  a  prisoner 
of  business. 

He  was  in  a  rut,  both  sides  of  which  were  hedged  with 
"back  work  that  had  piled  up  on  him."  He  had  no  de- 
sire, no  ambition,  no  interest,  except  in  Ruth  and  in  mak- 
ing the  Touricar  pay. 

The  Touricar  Company  had  never  paid  expenses  as 
yet.  How  much  longer  would  old  VanZile  be  satisfied 
with  millions  to  come  in  the  future — perhaps? 

Carl  even  took  work  home  with  him,  though  for  Ruth's 
sake  he  wanted  to  go  out  and  play.  It  really  was  for  her 
sake;  he  himself  liked  to  play,  but  the  disease  of  per- 
petual overwork  had  hold  of  him.  He  was  glad  to  have 
her  desert  him  for  an  evening  now  and  then  and  go  out 
to  the  Peace  Waters  Country  Club  for  a  dance  with  Phil 
and  Olive  Dunleavy.  She  felt  guilty  when  she  came 
home  and  found  him  still  making  calculations.  But  she 
hummed  waltzes  while  she  put  on  a  thin,  blue  silk  dress- 
ing-gown and  took  down  her  hair. 

"I  cant  stand  this  grubby,  shut-in  prison,"  she  finally 
snapped  at  him,  on  an  evening  when  he  would  not  go  to 
the  first  night  of  a  roof-garden. 

He  snarled  back:  "You  don't  have  to!  Why  don't 
you  go  with  your  bloomin'  Phil  and  Olive  ?  Of  course,  I 
don't  ever  want  to  go  myself!" 

"See  here,  my  friend,  you  have  been  taking  advantage 
for  a  long  time  now  of  the  fact  that  you  were  ill.  I'm 
not  going  to  be  your  nurse  indefinitely."  She  slammed  her 
bedroom  door. 

Later  she  came  stalking  out,  very  dignified,  and  left 
the  flat.  He  pretended  not  to  see  her.  But  as  soon  as 
the  elevator  door  had  clanged  and  the  rumbling  old  car 
had  begun  to  carry  her  down,  away  from  him,  the  flat 
was  noisy  with  her  absence.  She  came  home  eagerly 
sorry — to  find  an  eagerly  sorry  Carl.  Then,  while  they 
cried  together,  and  he  kissed  her  lips,  they  made  a  com- 

392 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

pact  that  no  matter  for  what  reason  or  through  whose 
fault  they  might  quarrel,  they  would  always  settle  it  be- 
fore either  went  to  bed.  .  .  .  But  they  were  uncomfortably 
polite  for  two  days,  and  obviously  were  so  afraid  that 
they  might  quarrel  that  they  were  both  prepared  to 
quarrel. 

Carl  had  been  back  at  work  for  less  than  one  month, 
but  he  hoped  that  the  Touricar  was  giving  enough  prom- 
ise now  of  positive  success  to  permit  him  to  play  during 
the  evening.  He  rented  a  VanZile  car  for  part  time; 
planned  week-end  trips;  hoped  they  could  spend 

Then  the  whole  world  exploded. 

Just  at  the  time  when  the  investigation  of  Twilight 
Sleep  indicated  that  the  world  might  become  civilized, 
the  Powers  plunged  into  a  war  whose  reason  no  man  has 
yet  discovered.  Carl  read  the  head-lines  on  the  morn- 
ing of  August  5th,  1914,  with  a  delusion  of  not  reading 
"news,"  but  history,  with  himself  in  the  history  book. 

Ten  thousand  books  record  the  Great  War,  and  how 
bitterly  Europe  realized  it;  this  is  to  record  that  Carl, 
like  most  of  America,  did  not  comprehend  it,  even  when 
recruits  of  the  Kaiser  marched  down  Broadway  with  Ger- 
man and  American  flags  intertwined,  even  when  his  busi- 
ness was  threatened.  It  was  too  big  for  his  imagination. 

Every  noon  he  bought  half  a  dozen  newspaper  extras 
and  hurried  down  to  the  bulletin-boards  on  the  Times  and 
Herald  buildings.  He  pretended  that  he  was  a  character 
in  one  of  the  fantastic  novels  about  a  world-war  when 
he  saw  such  items  as  "Russians  invading  Prussia,"  "Japs 
will  enter  war,"  "Aeroplane  and  submarine  attack  English 
cruiser." 

"Rats!"  he  said,  "I'm  dreaming.  There  couldn't  be 
a  war  like  that.  We're  too  civilized.  I  can  prove  the 
whole  thing  's  impossible." 

In  the  world-puzzle  nothing  confused  Carl  more  than 
the  question  of  socialism.  He  had  known  as  a  final  fact 
that  the  alliance  of  French  and  German  socialist  work- 

393 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

men  made  war  between  the  two  nations  absolutely  im- 
possible— and  his  knowledge  was  proven  ignorance,  his 
faith  folly.  He  tentatively  bought  a  socialist  magazine 
or  two,  to  find  some  explanation,  and  found  only  greater 
confusion  on  the  part  of  the  scholars  and  leaders  of  the 
party.  They,  too,  did  not  understand  how  it  had  all 
happened;  they  stood  amid  the  ruins  of  international 
socialism,  sorrowing.  If  their  faith  was  darkened,  how 
much  more  so  was  Carl's  vague  untutored  optimism 
about  world-brotherhood. 

He  had  two  courses — to  discard  socialism  as  a  failure, 
or  to  stand  by  it  as  a  course  of  action  which  was  logical 
but  had  not,  as  yet,  been  able  to  accomplish  its  end.  He 
decided  to  stand  by  it;  he  could  not  see  himself  plunging 
into  the  unutterable  pessimism  of  believing  that  all  of 
mankind  were  such  beast  fools  that,  after  this  one  great 
sin,  they  could  not  repent  and  turn  from  tribal  murder. 
And  what  other  remedy  was  there?  If  socialism  had  not 
prevented  the  war,  neither  had  monarchy  nor  bureau- 
cracy, bourgeois  peace  movements,  nor  the  church. 

With  a  whole  world  at  war,  Carl  thought  chiefly  of  his 
own  business.  He  was  not  abnormal.  The  press  was 
filled  with  bewildered  queries  as  to  what  would  happen 
to  America.  For  two  weeks  the  automobile  business 
seemed  dead,  save  for  a  grim  activity  in  war-trucks. 
VanZile  called  in  Carl  and  shook  his  head  over  the  future 
of  the  Touricar,  now  that  all  luxuries  were  threatened. 

But  the  Middle  West  promised  a  huge  crop  and  pros- 
perity. The  East  followed;  then,  slowly,  the  South, 
despite  the  closed  outlet  for  its  cotton  crop.  Within  a 
few  weeks  all  sorts  of  motor-cars  were  selling  well,  es- 
pecially expensive  cars.  It  was  apparent  that  automobiles 
were  no  longer  merely  luxuries.  There  was  even  a  prom- 
ise of  greater  trade  than  ever,  so  rapidly  were  all  the  cars 
of  the  warring  nations  being  destroyed. 

But,  once  VanZile  had  considered  the  possibility  of 
394 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

letting  go  his  Touricar  interest  in  order  to  be  safe,  he 
seemed  always  to  be  considering  it.  Carl  read  fate  in 
VanZile's  abstracted  manner.  And  if  VanZile  withdrew, 
Carl's  own  stock  would  be  worthless.  But  he  stuck  at 
his  work,  with  something  of  a  boy's  frightened  stubborn- 
ness and  something  of  a  man's  quiet  sternness.  Fear  was 
never  far  from  him.  In  an  aeroplane  he  had  never  been 
greatly  frightened;  he  could  himself,  by  his  own  efforts, 
fight  the  wind.  But  how  could  he  steer  a  world-war  or 
a  world-industry? 

He  tried  to  conceal  his  anxiety  from  Ruth,  but  she 
guessed  it.  She  said,  one  evening:  "Sometimes  I  think 
we  two  are  unusual,  because  we  really  want  to  be  free. 
And  then  a  thing  like  this  war  comes  and  our  bread  and 
butter  and  little  pink  cakes  are  in  danger,  and  I  realize 
we're  not  free  at  all;  that  we're  just  like  all  the  rest, 
prisoners,  dependent  on  how  much  the  job  brings  and 
how  fast  the  subway  runs.  Oh,  sweetheart,  we  mustn't 
forget  to  be  just  a  bit  mad,  no  matter  how  serious  things 
become."  Standing  very  close  to  him,  she  put  her  head 
on  his  shoulder. 

"Sure  mustn't.  Must  stick  by  each  other  all  the 
more  when  the  world  takes  a  run  and  jumps  on  us." 

"Indeed  we  will!" 

Unsparingly  the  war's  cosmic  idiocy  continued,  and  Carl 
crawled  along  the  edge  of  a  business  precipice,  looking 
down.  He  became  so  accustomed  to  it  that  he  began  to 
enjoy  the  view.  The  old  Carl,  with  the  enthusiasm  which 
had  served  him  for  that  undefined  quality  called  "cour- 
age," began  to  come  to  life  again,  laughing,  "Let  the 
darned  old  business  bust,  if  she's  going  to." 

Only,  it  refused  to  bust. 

It  kept  on  trembling,  while  Carl  became  nervous  again, 

then  gaily  defiant,  then  nervous  again,  till  the  alternation 

of  gloom   and   bravado  disgusted  him  and  made  Ruth 

wonder  whether  he  was  an  office-slave  or  a  freebooter. 

26  395 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

As  he  happened  to  be  both  at  the  time,  it  was  hard  for  him 
to  be  either  convincingly.  She  accused  him  of  vacillat- 
ing; he  retorted;  the  suspense  kept  them  both  raw.  .  .  . 

To  add  to  their  difficulties  of  adjustment  to  each 
other,  and  to  the  ego-mad  world,  Ruth's  sense  of  estab- 
lished amenities  was  shocked  by  the  reappearance  of 
Carl's  pioneering  past  as  revealed  in  the  lively  but  vulgar 
person  of  Martin  Dockerill,  Carl's  former  aviation  me- 
chanic. 

Martin  Dockerill  was  lanky  and  awkward  as  ever,  he 
still  wrote  post-cards  to  his  aunt  in  Fall  River,  and  ad- 
mired burlesque-show  choruses,  but  he  no  longer  played 
the  mouth-organ  (publicly),  for  he  had  become  so  well- 
to-do  as  to  be  respectable.  As  foreign  agent  for  the  Des 
Moines  Auto-Truck  Company  he  had  toured  Europe, 
selling  war-trucks,  or  lorries,  as  the  English  called  them, 
first  to  the  Balkan  States,  then  to  Italy,  Russia,  and 
Turkey.  He  was  for  a  time  detailed  to  the  New  York 
office. 

It  did  not  occur  either  to  him  nor  to  Carl  that  he  was 
not  "welcome  to  drop  in  any  time;  often  as  possible," 
to  slap  Carl  on  the  back,  loudly  recollect  the  time  when 
he  had  got  drunk  and  fought  with  a  policeman  in  San 
Antonio,  or  to  spend  a  whole  evening  belligerently  dis- 
cussing the  idea  of  war  or  types  of  motor-trucks  when 
Ruth  wistfully  wanted  Carl  to  herself.  Martin  supposed, 
because  she  smiled,  that  she  was  as  interested  as  Carl 
in  his  theories  about  aeroplane-scouting  in  war. 

Ruth  knew  that  most  of  Carl's  life  had  been  devoted 
to  things  quite  outside  her  own  sphere  of  action,  but  she 
had  known  it  without  feeling  it.  His  talk  with  Martin 
showed  her  how  sufficient  his  life  had  been  without  her. 
She  began  to  worry  lest  he  go  back  to  aviation. 

So  began  their  serious  quarrels;  there  were  not  many  of 
them,  and  they  were  forgotten  out  of  existence  in  a  day 
or  two;  but  there  were  at  least  three  pitched  battles  dur- 
ing which  both  of  them  believed  that  "this  ended  every- 

396 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

thing."  They  quarreled  always  about  the  one  thing 
which  had  intimidated  them  before — the  need  of  quarrel- 
ing; though  apropos  of  this  every  detail  of  life  came  up: 
Ruth's  conformities;  her  fear  that  he  would  fly  again; 
her  fear  that  the  wavering  job  was  making  him  indecisive. 

And  Martin  Dockerill  kept  coming,  as  an  excellent 
starting-point  for  dissension. 

Ruth  did  not  dislike  Martin's  roughness,  but  when  the 
ex-mechanic  discovered  that  he  was  making  more  money 
than  was  Carl,  and  asked  Carl,  in  her  presence,  if  he'd 
like  a  loan,  then  she  hated  Martin,  and  would  give  no 
reason.  She  became  unable  to  see  him  as  anything  but 
a  boor,  an  upstart  servant,  whose  friendship  with  Carl 
indicated  that  her  husband,  too,  was  an  "outsider." 
Believing  that  she  was  superbly  holding  herself  in,  she 
asked  Carl  if  there  was  not  some  way  of  tactfully  suggest- 
ing to  Martin  that  he  come  to  the  flat  only  once  in  two 
weeks,  instead  of  two  or  three  times  a  week.  Carl  was 
angry.  She  said  furiously  what  she  really  thought,  and 
retired  to  Aunt  Emma's  for  the  evening.  When  she  re- 
turned she  expected  to  find  Carl  as  repentant  as  herself. 
Unfortunately  that  same  Carl  who  had  declared  that  it 
was  pure  egotism  to  regard  one's  own  religion  or  country 
as  necessarily  sacred,  regarded  his  own  friends  as  sacred 
— a  noble  faith  which  is  an  important  cause  of  political 
graft.  He  was  ramping  about  the  living-room,  waiting 
for  a  fight — and  he  got  it. 

Their  moment  of  indiscretion.  The  inevitable  time 
when,  believing  themselves  fearlessly  frank,  they  ex- 
aggerated every  memory  of  an  injury.  Ruth  pointed  out 
that  Carl  had  disliked  Florence  Crewden  as  much  as  she 
had  disliked  Martin.  She  renewed  her  accusation  that 
he  was  vacillating;  scoffed  at  Walter  MacMonnies  (whom 
she  really  liked),  Gertie  Cowles  (whom  she  had  never 
met),  and  even,  hesitatingly,  Carl's  farmer  relatives. 

And  Carl  was  equally  unpleasant.  At  her  last  thrust 
he  called  her  a  thin-blooded  New-Yorker  and  slammed 

397 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

his  bedroom  door.  They  had  broken  their  pledge  not  to 
go  to  bed  on  a  quarrel. 

He  was  gone  before  she  came  out  to  breakfast  in  the 
morning. 

In  the  evening  they  were  perilously  polite  again.  Martin 
Dockerill  appeared  and,  while  Ruth  listened,  Carl  revealed 
how  savagely  his  mind  had  turned  overnight  to  a  longing 
for  such  raw  adventuring  as  she  could  never  share.  He 
feverishly  confessed  that  he  had  for  many  weeks  wavered 
between  hating  the  whole  war  and  wanting  to  enlist  in 
the  British  Aero  Corps,  to  get  life's  supreme  sensation — 
scouting  ten  thousand  feet  in  air,  while  dozens  of  bat- 
teries fired  at  him;  a  nose-to-earth  volplane.  The  thinking 
Carl,  the  playmate  Carl  that  Ruth  knew,  was  masked  as 
the  foolhardy  adventurer — and  as  one  who  was  not  mere- 
ly talking,  but  might  really  do  the  thing  he  pictured. 
And  Martin  Dockerill  seemed  so  dreadfully  to  take  it  for 
granted  that  Carl  might  go. 

Carl's  high  note  of  madness  dropped  to  a  matter-of-fact 
chatter  about  a  kind  of  wandering  which  shut  her  out  as 
completely  as  did  the  project  of  war.  "I  don't  know," 
said  he,  "but  what  the  biggest  fun  in  chasing  round  the 
country  is  to  get  up  from  a  pile  of  lumber  where  you've 
pounded  your  ear  all  night  and  get  that  funny  railroad 
smell  of  greasy  waste,  and  then  throw  your  feet  for  a  hand- 
out and  sneak  on  a  blind  and  go  hiking  off  to  some  town 
you've  never  heard  of,  with  every  brakie  and  constabule 
out  after  you.  That's  living!" 

When  Martin  was  gone  Carl  glanced  at  her.  She  stiff- 
ened and  pretended  to  be  absorbed  in  a  magazine.  He 
took  from  the  mess  of  papers  and  letters  that  lived  in  his 
inside  coat  pocket  a  war-map  he  had  clipped  from  a  news- 
paper, and  drew  tactical  lines  on  it.  From  his  room  he 
brought  a  small  book  he  had  bought  that  day.  He 
studied  it  intently.  Ruth  managed  to  see  that  the  title 
of  the  book  was  Aeroplanes  and  Air-Scouting  in  the  Euro- 
pean Armies. 

398 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

She  sprang  up,  cried:  "Hawk!  Why  are  you  reading 
that?" 

"Why  shouldn't  I  read  it?" 

"You  don't  mean  to You " 

"Oh  no,  I  don't  suppose  I'd  have  the  nerve  to  go  and 
enlist  now.  You've  already  pointed  out  to  me  that  I've 
been  getting  cold  feet." 

"But  why  do  you  shut  me  out?    Why  do  you?" 

"Oh,  good  Lord!  have  we  got  to  go  all  over  that  again? 
We've  gone  over  it  and  over  it  and  over  it  till  I'm  sick  of 
telling  you  it  isn't  true." 

''I'm  very  sorry,  Hawk.  Thank  you  for  making  it 
clear  to  me  that  I'm  a  typical  silly  wife." 

"And  thank  you  for  showing  me  I'm  a  clumsy  brute. 
You've  done  it  quite  often  now.  Of  course  it  doesn't 
mean  anything  that  I've  given  up  aviation." 

"Oh,  don't  be  melodramatic.  Or  if  you  must  be,  don't 
fail  to  tell  me  that  I've  ruined  your  life." 

"Very  well.     I  won't  say  anything,  then,  Ruth." 

"Don't  look  at  me  like  that,  Hawk.  So  hard.  Study- 
ing me.  .  .  .  Can't  you  understand Haven't  you  any 

perception?  Can't  you  understand  how  hard  it  is  for 
me  to  come  to  you  like  this,  after  last  night,  and  try — — " 

"Very  nice  of  you,"  he  said,  grimly. 

With  one  cry  of  "Oh!"  she  ran  into  her  bedroom. 

He  could  hear  her  sobbing;  he  could  feel  her  agony 
dragging  him  to  her.  But  no  woman's  arms  should  drug 
his  anger,  this  time,  to  let  it  ache  again.  For  once  he 
definitely  did  not  want  to  go  to  her.  So  futile  to  make 
up  and  quarrel,  make  up  and  quarrel.  He  was  impatient 
that  her  distant  sobs  expressed  so  clearly  a  wordless  de- 
mand that  he  come  to  her  and  make  peace.  "Hell!"  he 
crawked;  jerked  his  top-coat  from  its  nail,  and  left  the 
flat — eleven  o'clock  of  a  chilly  November  evening. 


CHAPTER  XLII 

DIZZY  with  all  the  problems  of  life,  he  did  not  notice 
where  he  went.  He  walked  blocks;  took  a  trolley- 
car;  got  off  to  buy  a  strong  cigar;  took  the  next  trolley 
that  came  along;  was  carried  across  the  Fifty-ninth  Street 
bridge  to  Long  Island.  At  the  eighth  or  tenth  stop  he 
hurried  out  of  the  car  just  as  it  was  starting  again.  He 
wondered  why  he  had  been  such  a  fool  as  to  leave  it  in  a 
dark  street  of  flat-faced  wooden  houses  with  door-yards 
of  trampled  earth  and  a  general  air  of  poverty,  goats,  and 
lunch-pails.  He  tramped  on,  a  sullen  and  youthless  man. 
Presently  he  was  in  shaggy,  open  country. 

He  was  frightened  by  his  desertion  of  Ruth,  but  he 
did  not  want  to  go  back,  nor  even  telephone  to  her.  He 
had  to  diagram  where  and  what  and  why  he  was;  deter- 
mine what  he  was  to  do. 

He  disregarded  the  war  as  a  cause  of  trouble.  Had 
there  been  no  extra  business-pressure  caused  by  the  war, 
there  would  have  been  some  other  focus  for  their  mis- 
understandings. They  would  have  quarreled  over  clothes 
and  aviation,  Aunt  Emma  and  Martin  Dockerill,  poverty 
and  dancing,  quite  the  same. 

Walking  steadily,  with  long  periods  when  he  did  not 
think,  but  stared  at  the  dusty  stars  or  the  shaky,  ill- 
lighted  old  houses,  he  alined  her  every  fault,  unhappily 
rehearsed  every  quarrel  in  which  she  had  been  to  blame, 
his  lips  moving  as  he  emphasized  the  righteous  retorts 
he  was  almost  certain  he  had  made.  It  was  not  hard  to 
find  faults  in  her.  Any  two  people  who  have  spent  more 
than  two  days  together  already  have  the  material  for  a 

400 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

life-long  feud,  in  traits  which  at  first  were  amusing  or 
admirable.  Ruth's  pretty  manners,  of  which  Carl  had 
been  proud,  he  now  cited  as  snobbish  affectation.  He  did 
not  spare  his  reverence,  his  passion,  his  fondness.  He 
mutilated  his  soul  like  a  hermit.  He  recalled  her  pleasure 
in  giving  him  jolly  surprises,  in  writing  unexpected  notes 
addressed  to  him  at  the  office,  as  fussy  discontent  with  a 
quiet,  normal  life;  he  regarded  her  excitement  over  dances 
as  evidence  that  she  was  so  dependent  on  country-club 
society  that  he  would  have  to  spend  the  rest  of  his  life 
drudging  for  her. 

He  wanted  to  flee.  He  saw  the  whole  world  as  a  con- 
spiracy of  secret,  sinister  powers  that  are  concealed  from 
the  child,  but  to  the  man  are  gradually  revealed  by  a 
pitiless  and  never-ending  succession  of  misfortunes.  He 
would  never  be  foot-loose  again.  His  land  of  heart's  de- 
sire would  be  the  office. 

But  the  ache  of  disappointment  grew  dull.  He  was 
stunned.  He  did  not  know  what  had  happened;  did  not 
even  know  precisely  how  he  came  to  be  walking  here. 
Now  and  then  he  remembered  anew  that  he  had  sharply 
left  Ruth — Ruth,  his  dear  girl! — remembered  that  she  was 
not  at  hand,  ready  to  explain  with  love's  lips  the  somber 
puzzles  of  life.  He  was  frightened  again,  and  beginning 
to  be  angry  with  himself  for  having  been  angry  with 
Ruth. 

He  had  walked  many  miles.  Brown  fields  came  up  at 
him  through  the  paling  darkness.  A  sign-board  showed 
that  he  was  a  few  miles  from  Mineola.  Letting  the  com- 
ing dawn  uplift  him,  he  tramped  into  Mineola,  with  a 
half-plan  of  going  on  to  the  near-by  Hempstead  Plains 
Aviation  Field,  to  see  if  there  was  any  early-morning 
flying.  It  would  be  bully  to  see  a  machine  again! 

At  a  lunch-wagon  he  ordered  buckwheat-cakes  and 
coffee.  Sitting  on  a  high  stool  before  a  seven-inch  shelf 
attached  to  the  wall,  facing  an  array  of  salt-castors  and 
catsup-bottles  and  one  of  those  colored  glass  windows 

401 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

with  a  portrait  of  Washington  which  give  to  all  lunch- 
wagons  their  air  of  sober  refinement,  Carl  ate  solemnly, 
meditatively.  ...  It  did  not  seem  to  him  an  ignoble  set- 
ting for  his  grief;  but  he  was  depressed  when  he  came 
out  to  a  drab  first  light  of  day  that  made  the  street  seem 
hopeless  and  unrested  after  the  night.  The  shops  were 
becoming  visible,  gray  and  chilly,  like  a  just-awakened 
janitor  in  slippers,  suspenders,  and  tousled  hair.  The 
pavement  was  wet.  Carl  crossed  the  street,  stared  at  the 
fly-specked  cover  of  a  magazine  six  months  old  that  lay 
in  a  shop  window  lighted  by  one  incandescent.  He 
gloomily  planned  to  go  back  and  have  another  cup  of 
coffee  on  the  shelf  before  Washington's  glassy  but  benign 
face. 

But  he  looked  down  the  street,  and  all  the  sky  was 
becoming  a  delicate  and  luminous  blue. 

He  trotted  off  toward  Hempstead  Plains. 

The  Aviation  Field  was  almost  abandoned.  Most  of 
the  ambitious  line  of  hangars  were  empty,  now,  with 
faded  grass  thick  before  the  great  doors  that  no  one  ever 
opened.  A  recent  fire  had  destroyed  a  group  of  five 
hangars. 

He  found  one  door  open,  and  three  sleepy  youngsters 
in  sweaters  and  khaki  trousers  bringing  out  a  mono- 
plane. 

Carl  watched  them  start,  bobbed  his  chin  to  the  music 
of  the  motor,  saw  the  machine  canter  down  the  field  and 
ascend  from  dawn  to  the  glory  of  day.  The  rising  sun 
picked  out  the  lines  of  the  uninclosed  framework  and 
hovered  on  the  silvery  wing-surface.  The  machine  circled 
the  field  at  two  hundred  feet  elevation,  smoothly,  peace- 
fully. And  peace  beyond  understanding  came  to  Carl. 

He  studied  the  flight.  "Mm.  Good  and  steady. 
Banks  a  little  sharp,  but  very  thorough.  Firs'  rate.  I 
believe  I  could  get  more  speed  out  of  her  if  I  were  flying. 
Like  to  try." 

Wonderingly  he  realized  that  he  did  not  want  to  fly; 

402 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

that  only  his  lips  said,  "Like  to  try."  He  was  almost 
as  much  an  outsider  to  aviation  as  though  he  had  never 
flown.  He  discovered  that  he  was  telling  Ruth  this 
fact,  in  an  imaginary  conversation;  was  commenting  for 
her  on  dawn-sky  and  the  plains  before  him  and  his  alien- 
ation from  exploits  in  which  she  could  not  share. 

The  monoplane  landed  with  a  clean  volplane.  The 
aviator  and  his  mechanicians  were  wheeling  it  toward 
the  hangar.  They  glanced  at  him  uninterestedly.  Carl 
understood  that,  to  them,  he  was  a  Typical  Bystander, 
here  where  he  had  once  starred. 

The  aviator  stared  again,  let  go  the  machine,  walked 
over,  exclaiming:  "Say,  aren't  you  Hawk  Ericson?  This 
is  an  honor.  I  heard  you  were  somewhere  in  New  York. 
Just  missed  you  at  the  Aero  Club  one  night.  Wanted  to 
ask  you  about  the  Bagby  hydro.  Won't  you  come  in 
and  have  some  coffee  and  sinkers  with  us?  Proud  to 
have  you.  My  name  's  Berry." 

"Thanks.     Be  glad  to." 

While  the  youngsters  were  admiring  him,  hearing  of 
the  giants  of  earlier  days,  while  they  were  drinking  in- 
spiration from  this  veteran  of  twenty-nine,  they  were  in 
turn  inspiring  Carl  by  their  faith  in  him.  He  had  been 
humble.  They  made  him  trust  himself,  not  egotistically, 
but  with  a  feeling  that  he  did  matter,  that  it  was  worth 
while  to  be  in  tune  with  life. 

Yet  all  the  while  he  knew  that  he  wanted  to  be  by 
himself,  because  he  could  thus  be  with  the  spirit  of  Ruth. 
And  he  knew,  subconsciously,  that  he  was  going  to  hurry 
back  to  Mineola  and  telephone  to  her. 

As  he  dog-trotted  down  the  road,  he  noted  the  old 
Dutch  houses  for  her;  picked  out  the  spot  where  he  had 
once  had  a  canvas  hangar,  and  fancied  himself  telling  her 
of  those  days.  He  did  not  remember  that  at  this  hangar 
he  had  known  Istra,  Istra  Nash,  the  artist,  whose  name 
he  scarce  recalled.  Istra  was  an  incident;  Ruth  was  the 
meaning  of  his  life. 

403 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

And  the  solution  of  his  problem  came,  all  at  once, 
when  suddenly  it  was  given  to  him  to  understand  what 
that  problem  was. 

Ruth  and  he  had  to  be  up  and  away,  immediately;  go 
any  place,  do  anything,  so  long  as  they  followed  new  trails, 
and  followed  them  together.  He  knew  positively,  after 
his  lonely  night,  that  he  could  not  be  happy  without  her 
as  comrade  in  the  freedom  he  craved.  And  he  also  knew 
that  they  had  not  done  the  one  thing  for  which  their 
marriage  existed.  They  were  not  just  a  man  and  a 
woman.  They  were  a  man  and  a  woman  who  had  prom- 
ised to  find  new  horizons  for  each  other. 

However  much  he  believed  in  the  sanctity  of  love's 
children,  Carl  also  believed  that  merely  to  be  married 
and  breed  casual  children  and  die  is  a  sort  of  suspended 
energy  which  has  no  conceivable  place  in  this  over- 
complex  and  unwieldy  world.  He  had  no  clear  nor  ring- 
ing message,  but  he  did  have,  just  then,  an  overpowering 
conviction  that  Ruth  and  he — not  every  one,  but  Ruth 
and  he,  at  least — had  a  vocation  in  keeping  clear  of  voca- 
tions, and  that  they  must  fulfil  it. 

Over  the  telephone  he  said:  "Ruth  dear,  I'll  be  right 
there.  Walked  all  night.  Got  straightened  out  now. 
I'm  out  at  Mineola.  It's  all  right  with  me  now,  blessed. 
I  want  so  frightfully  much  to  make  it  all  right  with  you. 
I'll  be  there  in  about  an  hour." 

She  answered  "Yes"  so  non-committally  that  he  was 
smitten  by  the  fact  that  he  had  yet  to  win  forgiveness  for 
his  frenzy  in  leaving  her;  that  he  must  break  the  shell 
of  resentment  which  would  incase  her  after  a  whole  night's 
brooding  between  sullen  walls. 

On  the  train,  unconscious  of  its  uproar,  he  was  be- 
spelled  by  his  new  love.  During  a  few  moments  of  their 
lives,  ordinary  real  people,  people  real  as  a  tooth-brush, 
do  actually  transcend  the  coarsely  physical  aspects  of  sex 
and  feeding,  and  do  approximate  to  the  unwavering  glow 
of  romantic  heroes.  Carl  was  no  more  a  romantic  hero* 

404 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

lover  than,  as  a  celebrated  aviator,  he  had  been  a  hero- 
adventurer.  He  was  a  human  being.  He  was  not  even 
admirable,  except  as  all  people  are  admirable,  from  the 
ash-man  to  the  king.  There  had  been  nothing  exemplary 
in  his  struggle  to  find  adjustment  with  his  wife;  he  had 
been  bad  in  his  impatience  just  as  he  had  been  good  in 
his  boyish  affection;  in  both  he  had  been  human.  Even 
now,  when  without  reserve  he  gave  himself  up  to  love, 
he  was  aware  that  he  would  ascend,  not  on  godlike  pinions, 
but  by  a  jerky  old  apartment-house  elevator,  to  make 
peace  with  a  vexed  girl  who  was  also  a  human  being, 
with  a  digestive  system  and  prejudices.  Yet  with  a  joy 
that  encompassed  all  the  beauty  of  banners  and  saluting 
swords,  romantic  towers  and  a  fugitive  queen,  a  joy 
transcending  trains  and  elevators  and  prejudices,  Carl 
knew  that  human  girl  as  the  symbol  of  man's  yearning 
for  union  with  the  divine;  he  desired  happiness  for  her 
with  a  devotion  great  as  the  passion  in  Galahad's  heart 
when  all  night  he  knelt  before  the  high  altar. 

He  came  slowly  up  to  their  apartment-house.  If  it 
were  only  possible  for  Ruth  to  trust  him,  now 

Mingled  with  his  painfully  clear  remembrance  of  all 
the  sweet  things  Ruth  was  and  had  done  was  a  tragic 
astonishment  that  he — this  same  he  who  was  all  hers  now 
— could  possibly  have  turned  impatiently  from  her  sobs. 
Yet  it  would  have  been  for  good,  if  only  she  would  trust 
him. 

Not  till  he  left  the  elevator,  on  their  floor,  did  he  com- 
prehend that  Ruth  might  not  be  awaiting  him;  might 
have  gone.  He  looked  irresolutely  at  the  grill  of  the 
elevator  door,  shut  on  the  black  shaft. 

"She  was  here  when  I  telephoned " 

He  waited.  Perhaps  she  would  peep  out  to  see  if  it 
was  he  who  had  come  up  in  the  elevator. 

She  did  not  appear. 

He  walked  the  endless  distance  of  ten  feet  to  their 
door,  unlocked  it,  labored  across  the  tiny  hall  into  the 

405 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

living-room.  She  was  there.  She  stood  supporting  her- 
self by  the  back  of  the  davenport,  her  eyes  red-edged  and 
doubtful,  her  face  tightened,  expressing  enmity  or  dread 
or  shy  longing.  He  held  out  his  hands,  like  a  prisoner 
beseeching  royal  mercy.  She  in  turn  threw  out  her  arms. 
He  could  not  say  one  word.  The  clumsy  signs  called 
"words"  could  not  tell  his  emotion.  He  ran  to  her,  and 
she  welcomed  his  arms.  He  held  her,  abandoned  himself 
utterly  to  her  kiss.  His  hard-driving  mind  relaxed;  re- 
laxed was  her  body  in  his  arms.  He  knew,  not  merely 
with  his  mind,  but  with  the  vaster  powers  that  drive 
mind  and  emotion  and  body,  that  Ruth,  in  her  disheveled 
dressing-gown,  was  the  glorious  lover  to  whom  he  had 
been  hastening  this  hour  past.  All  the  love  which  civili- 
zation had  tried  to  turn  into  Normal  Married  Life  had 
escaped  Efficiency's  pruning-hook,  and  had  flowered. 

"It's  all  right  with  me,  now,"  she  said;  "so  wonder- 
fully all  right." 

"I  want  to  explain.  Had  to  be  by  myself;  find  out. 
Must  have  seemed  so  unspeakably  r " 

"Oh,  don't,  don't  explain!    Our  kiss  explained." 

While  they  talked  on  the  davenport  together,  reaching 
out  again  and  again  for  the  hands  that  now  really  were 
there,  Ruth  agreed  with  Carl  that  they  must  be  up  and 
away,  not  wait  till  it  should  be  too  late.  She,  too,  saw 
how  many  lovers  plan  under  the  June  honeymoon  to  sail 
away  after  a  year  or  two  and  see  the  great  world,  and, 
when  they  wearily  die,  know  that  it  will  still  be  a  year 
or  two  before  they  can  flee  to  the  halcyon  isles. 

But  she  did  insist  that  they  plan  practically;  and  it 
was  she  who  wondered:  "But  what  would  happen  if 
everybody  went  skipping  off  like  us?  Who'd  bear  the 
children  and  keep  the  fields  plowed  to  feed  the  ones  that 
ran  away?" 

"Golly!"  cried  Carl,  "wish  that  were  the  worst  problem 
we  had!  Maybe  a  thousand  years  from  now,  when  every 

406 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE   HAWK 

one  is  so  artistic  that  they  want  to  write  books,  it  will  be 

hard  to  get  enough  drudges.  But  now Look  at  any 

office,  with  the  clerks  toiling  day  after  day,  even  the  un- 
married ones.  Look  at  all  the  young  fathers  of  families, 
giving  up  everything  they  want  to  do,  to  support  children 
who'll  do  the  same  thing  right  over  again  with  their  chil- 
dren. Always  handing  on  the  torch  of  life,  but  never 
getting  any  light  from  it.  People  don't  run  away  from 
slavery  often  enough.  And  so  they  don't  ever  get  to  do 
real  work,  either!" 

"But,  sweetheart,  what  if  we  should  have  children  some 

day?  You  know Of  course,  we  haven't  been  ready 

for  them  yet,  but  some  day  they  might  come,  anyhow, 
and  how  could  we  wander  round ' 

"Oh,  probably  they  will  come  some  day,  and  then  we'll 
take  our  dose  of  drudgery  like  the  rest.  There's  nothing 
that  our  dear  civilization  punishes  as  it  does  begetting 
children.  For  poisoning  food  by  adulterating  it  you 
may  get  fined  fifty  dollars,  but  if  you  have  children 
they  call  it  a  miracle — as  it  is — and  then  they  get  busy 
and  condemn  you  to  a  lifetime  of  being  scared  by  the 
boss." 

"Well,  darling,  please  don't  blame  it  on  me." 

"I  didn't  mean  to  get  so  oratorical,  blessed.  But  it 
does  make  me  mad  the  way  the  state  punishes  one  for 
being  willing  to  work  and  have  children.  Perhaps  if 
enough  of  us  run  away  from  nice  normal  grinding,  we'll 
start  people  wondering  just  why  they  should  go  on  toiling 
to  produce  a  lot  of  booze  and  clothes  and  things  that 
nobody  needs." 

"Perhaps,  my  Hawk.  .  .  .  Don't  you  think,  though, 
that  we  might  be  bored  in  your  Rocky  Mountain  cabin, 
if  we  were  there  for  months  and  months  ?" 

"Yes,  I  suppose  so,"  Carl  mused.  "The  rebellion 
against  stuffy  marriage  has  to  be  a  whole  lot  wider  than 
some  little  detail  like  changing  from  city  to  country. 
Probably  for  some  people  the  happiest  thing  'd  be  to  live 

407 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

in  a  hobohemian  flat  and  have  parties,  and  for  some  to 
live  in  the  suburbs  and  get  the  missus  elected  president 
of  the  Village  Improvement  Society.  For  us,  I  believe, 
it's  change  and  keep  going.1' 

"Yes,  I  do  think  so.  Hawk,  my  Hawk,  I  lay  awake 
nearly  all  night  last  night,  realizing  that  we  are  one,  not 
because  of  a  wedding  ceremony,  but  because  we  can  un- 
derstand each  other's  make-b'lieves  and  seriousnesses. 
I  knew  that  no  matter  what  happened,  we  had  to  try 
again.  ...  I  saw  last  night,  by  myself,  that  it  was  not  a 
question  of  finding  out  whose  fault  a  quarrel  was;  that 
it  wasn't  anybody's  'fault/  but  just  conditions.  .  .  . 
And  we'll  change  them.  .  .  .  We  won't  be  afraid  to  be 
free." 

"We  won't!     Lord!  life's  wonderful!" 

"Yes!  When  I  think  of  how  sweet  life  can  be — so 
wonderfully  sweet — I  know  that  all  the  prophets  must 
love  human  beings,  oh,  so  terribly,  no  matter  how  sad 
they  are  about  the  petty  things  that  lives  are  wasted 
over.  .  .  .  But  I'm  not  a  prophet.  I'm  a  girl  that's  aw- 
fully much  in  love,  and,  darling,  I  want  you  to  hold  me 
close." 


Three  months  later,  in  February,  1915,  Ruth  and  Carl 
sailed  for  Buenos  Ayres,  America's  new  export-market. 
Carl  was  the  Argentine  Republic  manager  for  the  VanZile 
Motor  Corporation,  possessed  of  an  unimportant  salary, 
a  possibility  of  large  commissions,  and  hopes  like  comets. 
Their  happiness  seemed  a  thing  enchanted.  They  had 
not  quarreled  again. 

The  S.S.  Sangrael,  for  Buenos  Ayres  and  Rio,  had  sailed 
from  snow  into  summer.  Ruth  and  Carl  watched  isles 
of  palms  turn  to  fantasies  carved  of  ebony,  in  the  rose 
and  garnet  sunset  waters,  and  the  vast  sky  laugh  out  in 
stars.  Carl  was  quoting  Kipling: 

408 


THE   TRAIL   OF   THE    HAWK 

"The  Lord  knows  what  we  may  find,  dear  lass, 
And  the  deuce  knows  what  we  may  do — 
But  we're  back  once  more  on  the  old  trail,  our  own  trail, 

the  out  trail, 
We're  down,  hull  down  on   the   Old  Trail — the  trail  that 

is  always  new. 

Anyway,"  he  commented,  "deuce  only  knows  what  we'll 
do  after  Argentine,  and  I  don't  care.  Do  you?" 
Her  clasping  hand  answered,  as  he  went  on: 
"Oh,  say,  bles-sed!  I  forgot  to  look  in  the  directory 
before  we  left  New  York  to  see  if  there  wasn't  a  Society 
for  the  Spread  of  Madness  among  the  Respectable.  It 
might  have  sent  us  out  as  missionaries. .  . .  There's  a  flying- 
fish;  and  to-morrow  I  won't  have  to  watch  clerks  punch 
a  time-clock;  and  you  can  hear  a  sailor  shifting  the 
ventilators;  and  there's  a  little  star  perched  on  the  fore- 
mast, singing;  but  the  big  thing  is  that  you're  here  beside 
me,  and  we're  going.  How  bully  it  is  to  be  living,  if  you 
don't  have  to  give  up  living  in  order  to  make  a  living." 


THE    END 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


100m-8,'65(F6282s8)2373 


PS3523.E94T73  1915 


3  2106  00212  3328 


